254 Psychology of Women and Gender
differences (cf., for example, the essays collected by
Kitzinger, 1994).
The Feminist Study of Women’s Lives
Many feminist researchers have investigated the experiences
of diverse groups of women and girls, situating their research
in specific historical and cultural contexts. Often these re-
searchers have chosen to study women as intentional actors,
relying on such methods as open-ended interviews and focus
groups rather than measurement of abstract psychologi-
cal constructs. They have examined diverse experiences of
women in contemporary society: poor and working-class
young women coping with cuts in welfare (Fine & Weis,
1998); dual-career professional couples (Gilbert, 1993);
women living amidst political turmoil and state-sponsored
terrorism (Lykes, 1989); lesbian and gay teenagers and their
peer and family networks (Russell, Bohan, & Lilly, 2000);
rural working-class girls (L. M. Brown, 1998); suburban and
urban teenagers’ sexual desire (Tolman & Szalacha, 1999);
and women coping with physical illness and impairment
(Ussher, 2000). Others have examined the lives and experi-
ences of women during particular historical episodes, such as
the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States
during World War II and the civil-rights movement of the
1950s (Franz & Stewart, 1994; Romero & Stewart, 1999).
Particularly notable has been the large body of research on
violence against girls and women, including rape and sexual
assault, incest, wife battering, and sexual harassment (e.g.,
Gordon & Riger, 1989; Gutek, 1985; Herman, 1992; Koss,
1993; Walker, 1979; Yllo & Bograd, 1988).
Feminist researchers’ concern with the particulars of
women’s experiences and situations sets them apart from the
mainstream of psychological research. From the 1940s on-
ward, research in mainstream journals has relied more and
more on college student samples, even though such samples
are not representative of the population at large with regard to
age, social class, ethnicity, marital status, maturity, and many
other aspects of experience (Sears, 1986). Yet, although femi-
nist psychology has incorporated studies of women at diverse
points in the life cycle, we still know little about many aspects
of women’s lives: sexuality and sexual desire, childbirth and
motherhood, inequality in the relationships of heterosexual
couples, and midlife and aging. The gaps in knowledge about
women are especially acute when it comes to women who are
not white and women who are not middle class. As Pamela
Reid (1993) has pointed out, women who are ethnic minori-
ties, poor, or working class are given little attention by
researchers except when they are seen as creating social prob-
lems. For example, there is abundant research on out-of-
wedlock pregnancy among African American teenagers but
little research on areas of strength and resilience such as skills
for coping with racism, commitment to academic achievement
and labor force participation, and spirituality and church mem-
bership. Although minority and working-class heterosexual
couples often have unconventional divisions of domestic re-
sponsibilities and child care, this too has not been studied. In
short, feminist psychology has not yet adequately addressed
the diversity of women’s lives, despite ongoing efforts to do
so. The knowledge base, though it is expanding, is still shaped
by the priorities of academic institutions and funding agencies,
allowing limited scope for innovation.Psychology of GenderIn an early paper, Rhoda Unger (1979) introduced psycholo-
gists to the termgender,which she defined as “those charac-
teristics and traits socio-culturally considered appropriate to
males and females.” The term was intended to set social as-
pects of maleness and femaleness apart from biological
mechanisms, so that the former could be submitted to scien-
tific scrutiny. Important in its time, Unger’s definition of
gender is only one of several in use today. Some have argued
for putting aside the definition of gender as a set of traits of in-
dividuals in favor of a view of gender as a socially prescribed
set of relations. Reviewing research on sex and gender, Kay
Deaux (1985) concluded that the research to that date had
been severely limited by the assumption that gender could be
fully understood as either a biological category, a finite list of
sex differences, or a set of stable personality traits. The model
she developed with Brenda Major (Deaux & Major, 1987)
conceptualized gender as an interactive process.
Feminist theorists have articulated a number of additional
ways to conceptualize gender that go beyond the individual
difference model. Gender has been seen as a complex set of
principles—a meaning system—that organizes male-female
relations in a particular social group or culture (Bem, 1993;
Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1988). Gender has also been
viewed as a marker of status, hierarchy, and social power
(Henley, 1977). Others 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 (Bohan, 1993; West & Zimmerman, 1987).
Gender has even been conceptualized as the “incorrigible” set
of beliefs that underlie the social construction of the binary
sex categories, male and female (Kessler & McKenna, 1978).
These alternative ways to conceptualize gender have
opened new areas of research. The question is no longer
simply “How do women differ psychologically from men?”
Instead researchers are asking more radical questions: How
are women and men perceived, treated, and rewarded differ-
ently in social interactions? What are the habits, language