Unit-4 : Contemporary Developments
Feminism
Feminism is a range of social and political movements that aim to define and establish social,
economic, and political equality of the sexes. The feminist movement provided the political
and intellectual momentum for overarching changes in many areas, including the discipline
of psychology. Feminists who were also psychologists, and psychologists who became
feminists used this momentum to move their concerns from the periphery of the discipline to
its center, effectively staking out a new field and a new disciplinary presence. Psychologists
have posed questions about sex and gender in virtually every area of psychology.
Feminism has always centered on ending the subordination of women and encompasses a
wide range of additional ideas, theories, and practices. Among feminist psychologists, this
spectrum is fully represented. A key strength of the feminist movement in psychology is that
diverse points of view are brought into interaction, leading to a productive intellectual
interchange and new developments.
Feminist psychologists view psychology as being sexist, that is, women are regarded as
inferior to men and are discriminated against because they are women. They also see
psychology as heterosexist, that is, gay men and lesbian women are considered to be
abnormal and are discriminated against because they are gays or lesbians. Further, feminist
psychologists claim that even though psychology is considered to be a science, and is
suggested to be neutral, objective, and value-free, it is actually value-laden, taking men to be
the universal standard, the center around which everything else revolves. Thus, apart from
being sexist and heterosexist, feminist psychologists also consider psychology to be
androcentric, that is male-centred.
Feminist psychology attempts to harness the power of psychology to improve the status of
women. In order to use psychology to bring about change in the wider world, feminist
psychologists believe they must also BPCC 106_2nd Proof.indd 228 4/1/2021 3:09:25 PM 229
Current Trends in Psychology bring about change in psychology. The idea behind this
thought is that like the society has an ingrained gender bias, traditional psychology still
reflects that bias, even if it may be in subtle and implicit ways. Feminist psychology is
explicitly political and nourished by the feminist movement.
Feminist psychologists engage in critical conversations about how best to study gender and
how best to do psychology, with respect to being a researcher, practitioner, teacher, or
activist. Scepticism about conventional ways of doing psychology has been a hallmark of
feminist psychology. Feminists have noted that psychological knowledge has often served the
interests of social groups of which psychologists are a part of. They have also analysed the
intellectual habits that have led psychologists to relegate knowledge about women to the
margins and to regard questions about gender as having little significance.
The field of feminist psychology was officially established in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
However, efforts by women to break down sexist barriers and undermine sexist assumptions
in psychology had started much earlier. The feminist movement in psychology had, actually,
begun since the beginning of the discipline itself. When the discipline of psychology was
established in the late 1800s, the long trajectory of the first-wave feminism was close to its
midpoint.
As the feminist movement was on the rise, feminist psychologists waged their own battles
within their chosen discipline, demanding that androcentric theories be acknowledged and
reformed and that sexist institutional practices be eliminated. One of these psychologists was
Naomi Weisstein, an ardent socialist feminist and one of the founders of the Chicago
Women’s Liberation Union.
Weisstein had herself been a victim of sexism during her graduate studies. These experiences
combined with her awareness of critical theory, fuelled her feminist fire. In 1968, she
published a paper called Kinder, Kirche, Kuche as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs the
Female. In the paper she criticized the field of psychology for failing to understand women
due to an over-reliance on biology, without looking at the social context. This paper laid the
groundwork for the social construction of gender, and would go one to become one of the
founding documents of feminist psychology.
In her landmark paper Kinder, Kirche, Kuche as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs the
Female, Weisstein argued that psychology had nothing to say about what women were really
like because, essentially, psychology did not know anything about it. She proposed, that this
was due to the focus of psychologists on inner traits and thus ignoring the social context.
Weisstein carefully reported a growing body of research from social psychology that
demonstrated how situational and interpersonal factors determine human behaviour, and drew
out the implications of these findings for understanding women’s behaviour. For Weisstein,
without considering social expectations about women and the social conditions under which
women lived, psychologists could have nothing of value to say about the experiences of
women.
In 1969, due to the emboldening of the women’s movement and the pioneering efforts of
psychologists like Naomi Weisstein, feminist psychologists met at the annual convention of
the American Psychological Association (APA) to discuss sexist practices within the field.
These practices included job advertisements indicating that ‘‘men only’’ need to apply, and
overt sexual harassment. The result of these often angry and heated discussions led to the
formation, in 1969, the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP).
In 1973, a task force established by the American Psychological Association (APA) found
that knowledge about women was deficient. Most psychological research, in that time, being
published in the field was conducted with White, college-aged men, with the assumption that
these results could be generalized to the universal human experience. Research on the
experiences of women, such as pregnancy, child rearing, menstruation, sexual harassment,
and rape, was simply absent. Consequently, the task force recommended that a division
devoted to the psychology of women be established to promote research in this area. In 1973,
Division 35, Psychology of Women, was formed. Elizabeth Douvan, social psychologist at
the University of Michigan, was the first president of the division. The division has now
become one of the largest divisions of APA.
Over the years, feminist psychologists have quickly moved beyond critique to focus on
generating new knowledge about women and gender. The psychology of women and gender
is now a varied enterprise that encompasses virtually every specialty area and intellectual
framework within psychology. It spans international boundaries, and has produced a large
body of research and scholarship.
Feminists in psychology openly challenged the choice of research topics in psychology. They
found fault in its theoretical constructs and research methods, and its theories about women’s
mental health, modes of diagnosis, and therapeutic interventions. According to the feminist
perspective, many aspects of psychological knowledge have been male-centered. Feminist
psychologists suggested that throughout history men have been studied much more often than
women. They gave examples of the classic studies of personality by Murray and Allport, as
well as the landmark study of McClelland on achievement motivation, all of which that had
excluded women. Additionally, psychological theories about many aspects of cognition,
social behaviour, emotion, and motivation have been influenced by cultural biases against
women. The behaviour of women, more often than men’s, has been seen as biologically
determined, with researchers overlooking the different social situations of women and men.
Psychologists, earlier, had assumed profound differences between men and women in
cognitive capacities, emotions, personality traits, values, and inclinations. These
presumptions supported for the norm of male superiority and justified a range of inequities
between men and women. One of the first projects of feminist psychologists, therefore, was a
program of corrective research that aimed at re-examining purported differences between
men and women. This led to a change in the ways of looking at the idea of sex differences.
Over the years, a number of important methodological and conceptual advances have been
made in researches of sex differences. Feminist researchers have pointed out repeatedly that a
sex-difference finding does not signify a difference that is inherent or biologically
determined. A great deal of feminist research has examined the power of roles, norms, and
expectations to influence behaviour, as well as the penalties incurred for role violations.
The conception of the measurement of masculinity and femininity in psychology was
challenged by feminist psychologists. In 1973, Anne Constantinople, feminist psychologist,
pointed out that standard psychological inventories were constructed with masculinity and
femininity as opposite ends of a single, bipolar continuum. According to those tests,
masculinity and femininity are considered to be mutually exclusive. Constantinople argued
against this assumption. She emphasized that an individual could embrace both masculine
and feminine traits and behaviours.
The social psychologist, Sandra Bem, in 1974, argued that having both masculine and
feminine qualities is required for optimal psychological functioning and personal adjustment.
She was thus, suggesting to embrace an androgynous sex-role identity. Bem designed the
Bem Sex Role Inventory, a scale of masculinity and femininity that permitted respondents to
endorse both masculine and feminine attributes (or neither). For the next coming years, the
ideas of Bem, and her inventory, framed much of feminist research and feminist approaches
to therapy. The work during this time, laid the foundation for the subsequent theorizing on
gender identity.
In the early 1980s, a new line of feminist inquiry emerged. Instead of making comparisons
between men and women, some researchers shifted their focus to the unique emotional
capacities, identities, and relational needs, of women. In this way women were put at the
center of inquiry, which made researchers to re-examine and re-evaluate feminine qualities
that had been ignored, disdained, or viewed as deficiencies or signs of immaturity.
In response to the early criticisms of the feminists, regarding cultural biases, ignoring social
contexts, sexism in diagnosis and clinical practice, and power differences in therapy, feminist
psychologists have developed alternate theories and conducted innovative research. They
have developed feminist-inspired therapies and diagnostic practices. Feminist psychologists
have also worked to improve the conditions of work for female therapists. They have
addressed the rights of therapy clients and promoted changes in the APA (American
Psychological Association) ethical code in order to provide better protection for clients.
Feminist Psychology and the Concept of Gender
In 1979, the feminist psychologist, Rhoda Unger, introduced the term gender to psychology.
She defined gender as those characteristics and traits socio-culturally considered appropriate
to males and females. The term was intended to set social aspects of maleness and femaleness
apart from biological mechanisms, so it can be scientifically scrutinised. This definition by
Unger is considered to be important in that time. However, in today’s time, Unger’s
definition of gender is just one of the many definitions that are used. Some have argued for
putting aside the definition of gender as a set of traits of individuals in favour of a view of
gender as a socially prescribed set of relations.
Feminist theorists have conceptualized gender that go beyond the perspective of simply
individual differences. Gender has been seen as a complex set of principles — a meaning
system — that organizes malefemale relations in a particular social group or culture. Gender
has also been viewed as a marker of status, hierarchy, and social power. Other feminist
theorists have conceptualized gender as the set of practices that create and enact masculinity
and femininity in mundane social contexts and in social institutions such as language and
law.
Social Constructionism
Philosophers of science have suggested observations are permeated with theoretical
assumptions. Whatever observations are made, they are influenced by the meaning attributed
to that object based on prior theory. This idea is referred to as the theory ladenness of
observation, and has now become a central part of modern philosophy of science.
However, this idea is not unique to philosophy of science. This same idea features in Gestalt
psychology as well as the ecological approach to perception. What people see in the world is
based on prior assumptions. Gestalt psychology provides an explanation for why theory
ladenness occurs. According to Gestaltists, people see things holistically, but that holistic
perception is based on prior theory. The idea of theory ladenness or attribution of meaning
based on prior theory, existing in philosophy of science and Gestaltian thought, was taken to
a further level by the approach called social constructionism. The essential idea of social
constructionism is that the interpretation of reality is not limited to a person’s mind in
isolation. Observations and interpretations of events, instead, emerge as part of discourse and
dialogue with other people. This means that reality is socially constructed, rather than
constructed by the individual. Reality emerges from social interactions.
The term social constructionism has been used in many different ways. The term first
appeared in the title of a book written by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman called The
Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, published in 1966.
As the title of the book suggests, it was used in the context of sociology. Later, the term
began to be used by social psychologists. Initially, in psychology, the term social
constructivism was used to emphasize the development of an individual’s meaning in a social
context. However, by the 1980s, the term social constructionism was linked with psychology.
One of the major proponents of social constructionism in psychology has been the social
psychologist, Ken Gergen. In 1985, Gergen wrote the article, The Social Constructionist
Movement in Modern Psychology, in the journal, American Psychologist. This article by
Gergen turned out to be like a manifesto, in a positive sense. It offered a succinct account of
what he felt were some issues of concern with respect to psychology, and also articulated the
benefits he felt due to adopting a social constructionist approach. In his article, Gergen
defined what he referred to as the social constructionist inquiry.
According to Gergen, a social constructionist inquiry is mainly concerned with elucidating
the processes by which people come to describe, explain, or otherwise account for the world
(including themselves) in which they live. It attempts to articulate common forms of
understanding as they now exist, as they have existed in prior historical periods, and as they
might exist if such creative attention is directed. In other words, instead of looking beyond
the everyday language for psychological explanations of what was really going on, Gergen
was suggesting that psychologists should view their research in terms of socially constructive
processes. It is these socially constructed processes, according to Gergen, that yield shared
understandings.
In this regard, Gergen was suggesting that psychologists should consider the wide range of
implications of what he termed the linguistic turn, which could be later found in the scholarly
works of hermeneutics. This ‘turn’ suggested that the meaning that is given to experience,
cannot be viewed in an absolute sense. It, instead, must be viewed as contributions to the
continuous human and cultural endeavor.
Gergen’s views were exhaustive and were drawn from diverse strands of philosophical,
historical and literary thought. The goal of Gergen was to bring about a perspective that
advocates a generative knowledge creation, so that that advantages of such knowledge can be
optimized for its users. This extended to his view of psychotherapy. According to him
therapeutic processes have an insufficient consideration of language-use in therapeutic
practice. He had the same concern for research in clinical phenomena as well. The idea of
social constructionism becomes relevant for social scientists interested in areas such as
beauty, gender, morality, pathology, race, science, and sexuality. Whereas it was once widely
believed that these phenomena were determined by fixed natural or metaphysical laws and
therefore were socio-historically invariant, social constructionists have repeatedly
demonstrated the extent to which these concepts are actually culturally relative or historically
specific. The conceptual resources with which such demonstrations are achieved hail from a
wide range of theoretical traditions both within and beyond the social sciences. With regard
to social constructionism, the three most prominent founders of the modern social sciences –
Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx, have played a significant role. They have set
major precedents for the social constructionist social science.
Emile Durkheim had a great influence on social constructionist research. He argued that
systems of classification reflect the social organization of the societies in which they occur.
This turn towards classification and the sociology of knowledge in anthropology provided an
important precedent for a wide range of writers, who became important figures in the realm
of constructionism. These writers include Pierre Bourdieu, Mary Douglas, Peter Winch, and
Michel Foucault.
Max Weber, the German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist popularized
Verstehen Sociology. Verstehen in German roughly translates to understand in a deep way or
empathic understanding. This influenced a wide range of early writers associated with
German idealism, including leaders of the constructionist tradition like Immanuel Kant,
Wilhelm Dilthey, and Friedrich Nietzsche. It has been suggested that if it were not for
Weber’s influence, the social sciences might well have provided a far less fertile soil for the
cultivation of social constructionism. In more recent times, the writings of Weber on ideal
types, meaning, values, and rationalization also exercised a wide range of specific influences
on other significant contributors to the idea of constructionism, which include Alfred Schutz,
Karl Mannheim, and Jürgen Habermas.
Among the classical theorists, it is Karl Marx who has been regarded to have the greatest
impact on social constructionism by way of his writings on ideology. Marx developed this
concept to suggest how people can suffer from a false consciousness that renders them
complicit in their own oppression. This idea was developed by later Marxists, such as Georg
Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci. They elaborated on concepts such as class consciousness,
reification, and hegemony, which had a great influence on research on social constructionism
by linking the supposed legitimacy of ideas to the interests of actors who are sufficiently
powerful to influence the standards by which their legitimacy is measured.
Social constructionism focuses on meaning and power. Meaning is not a property of the
objects and events themselves, but a construction. Meaning is the product of the prevailing
cultural frame of social, linguistic, discursive, and symbolic practices. Individuals and groups
interacting together in a social system, over a period of time, form concepts or mental
representations of each other’s actions. These concepts eventually become habituated into
reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. The roles are made available to
other members of the society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions that are
said to be institutionalized. In the process of this institutionalization, meaning is embedded in
society. Therefore, knowledge, conceptions, and beliefs of what reality is becomes embedded
in the institutional fabric of society.
From the perspective of social constructionism, knowledge and systems are inherently
dependent upon communities of shared intelligibility and vice versa. They are governed to a
large degree by normative rules that are historically and culturally situated. The criteria,
which are invoked to identify behaviours and events are largely circumscribed by culture,
history and social context. Social constructionism, therefore, locates meaning in an
understanding of how ideas and attitudes are developed over time within a social, community
context. All knowledge evolves in the space between people, and in the realm of the common
world. An individual, thus, develops a sense of identity or inner voice only through the on-
going conversations with intimates. Social constructionism considers an individual to be an
integral part of cultural, political and historical evolution, in specific times and places.
Consequently, psychological processes are viewed crossculturally, in social and temporal
contexts. Apart from the inherited and developmental aspects of humanity, social
constructionism suggests that all aspects of humanity are created, maintained and destroyed
in interactions with others through time. The social practices of life begin and are recreated in
the present, and eventually end.
Constructivism, Social Constructivism, and Social Constructionism Constructivism is the
theoretical perspective that suggests that people actively build their perception of the world
and interpret objects and events that surround them in terms of what they already know.
Thus, their current state of knowledge guides processing, which has a significant influence on
how new information is acquired, and what type of new information is acquired.
Constructivists have the belief that knowledge and reality are constructed within the
individual. They emphasize on what takes place within the mind and brain of the individual,
focusing on cognitive and biological processes.
Social constructivism is the school of thought that suggests that knowledge is embedded in
the social context and views of thoughts, feelings, language, and behaviour as the result of
interchanges with the external world. Social constructivists argue that there is no separation
between subjectivity and objectivity and that the dichotomy between the person and the
situation is incorrect. They suggest that individual is intimately and intricately bound within
social, cultural, and historical forces and cannot be understood fully without consideration of
these social forces. According to social constructivism, not just knowledge but also reality
itself is created in an interactive process and thus people are exclusively what their society
shapes them to be.
Social constructionism is the epistemological position, mainly associated with
postmodernism. According to social constructionism, knowledge of reality is in fact a
construct of language, culture, and society that has no objective or universal validity. In this
sense, knowledge is contingent on humanity’s collective social self instead of on any inherent
qualities that items or ideas possess. Social constructionists, therefore, seek to discover the
ways in which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their perceived reality
by looking at how various phenomena are created, understood, and accepted by the social
institutions and contexts in which they exist.
