EDP 362T Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: American Psychological Association, Phyllis Chesler, Naomi Weisstein
Lecture 1:
Beginnings:
• Critical psychology: questions and challenges the moral, political, and scientific claims of
psychology and tries to influence the direction of the field as a whole.
o Feminist psychology: theoretical connections to women’s studies and social
activism.
o Psychology of women: women’s lives and experiences.
o Psychology of gender: social and biological difference between men and women.
• 1960s: realized psychology is androcentric (male-centered), began to rethink
psychological concepts and methods to produce new research with women as focus of
study, and analysis of social relations between women and men.
o Naomi Weisstein (1968): psychology didn’t represent needs/wants of women.
o Phyllis Chesler (1972): Women and Madness, psychology was used to control
women.
Psychology and Feminism:
• First Wave:
o Seneca Falls Declaration 1848 – rejected doctrine of female inferiority; won right
to vote 19th Amendment 1920.
• Second Wave:
o 1960s, female psychologists and men who supported them began to focus on
study of women and gender.
▪ 1969 Association of Women in Psychology (AWP)
▪ 1973 American Psychological Association (APA) forms Div. 35, the
Psychology of Women.
▪ Feminist activism fuels the movement.
• Third Wave:
o Early 1990s, freedom to do what you wanted.
o Continued to build on successes in new generation, taking more leadership roles.
AWP continues to thrive independently as an activist organization. Division 35
grew.
o Ensuring reproductive freedom, ending violence against women, integrating
women into politics.
o Integrational conflict b/w 2nd and 3rd wave feminists: 2nd wavers wanted to break
barriers into previously restricted jobs, vs. 3rd wavers wanted freedom of choice.
• Fourth Wave:
o 2005 or 2008 started: 2012 represented a significant resurgence, focuses on the
use of social media intensely.
o Justice for women and opposition to sexual harassment and violence against
women (workplace harassment, campus sexual assault, rape culture).
o Defined by technology.
Voices from the Margins:
• Mary Calkins: never got PhD from Harvard because she was a woman.
• Helen Thompson Wooley: 1st experiment on sex difference in mental traits, openly
critical of anti-woman prejudices. Paved way to replace unexamined assumptions about
women’s natural limits.
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