264 Psychology of Women and Gender
remains, however, to translate that evidence into a form that
will be effective and persuasive.
Every movement for social change meets resistance. The
field of the psychology of women and gender is no exception.
Such resistance is an inevitable reaction to any struggle for
change. In psychology, the resistance includes disdain for
work on “women’s” topics and for feminist journals. Women,
the majority of humankind, are still considered a special pop-
ulation; research on women is seen as failing to contribute to
psychological knowledge about human behavior. An analysis
of psychology journal articles showed that when researchers
used an all-female (versus an all-male) sample, they were
more likely to provide a justification for a single-sex sample
and to point out that their results could not be generalized to
the other sex (Ader & Johnson, 1994). Finally, many feminist
psychologists value collaboration and interdisciplinary work,
research with applied potential, and the use of innovative re-
search approaches. All of these draw further antipathy.
CONCLUSION
Has the psychology of women and gender significantly al-
tered the field of psychology? With regard to psychological
knowledge, some see fundamental transformations (e.g.,
Worell & Johnson, 1997). Others argue that only weakened,
nonthreatening versions of feminist ideas have been assimi-
lated into the field as a whole (e.g., Burman, 1997). We argue
that although the alliance between psychology and feminism
has been uneasy, feminism has put on the table for psychol-
ogy a number of provocative problems and challenges. To
varying degrees, it has changed the field with respect to them.
Feminist researchers have put forth a strong claim that gender
is an important constituent of social life. They have contested
certain technologies of research, some key epistemological
assumptions, and the ethics of certain research practices. To
us, the importance of feminist psychology is not that it can
correct the omissions and biases of mainstream psychology
and produce objective truths. That is impossible. Rather, fem-
inist psychology can serve to help all psychologists become
more self-aware of their perspectives, politics, and practices
and to ask how these shape the production of knowledge.
Feminists in clinical practice have offered new perspec-
tives on disorders of women and new ideas about the conduct
of therapy. They have protested flawed diagnostic and treat-
ment practices, ethical breaches, and outmoded theoretical
constructs. Sometimes these protests have succeeded in pro-
voking change. Even when they did not succeed, they raised
awareness that policies and practices in the mental health
field are not the outcome of a pristine and unassailable
scientific consensus but rather a concatenation of scientific
evidence, popular beliefs, and the vested interests of many
parties.
Conditions for women faculty members, students, and
therapists have improved vastly since 1970, in large part be-
cause of feminist activism. Knowledge about women and
gender is now available to students of psychology at both un-
dergraduate and graduate levels. Moreover, with barriers
to women’s participation removed by the federal legisla-
tion of the 1970s, women were soon enrolling in psy-
chology graduate programs in large numbers. In 1971,
women were awarded fewer than 25 percent of doctorates in
psychology; by 1999, they received 66 percent. Furthermore,
many women have attained recognition for their academic
accomplishments—they are professors, department chairs,
program directors, and editors of journals. Many now have
influence in the publication process, as well as the awarding
of tenure and promotion, grants, and awards. Only two
women held the presidency of APA from its inception in 1892
up to 1970; five women have held the presidency since 1970.
(Mary Calkins held the presidency in 1905; Margaret Wash-
burn, in 1921. The five recent women presidents are Florence
Denmark, Janet Spence, Bonnie Strickland, Dorothy Cantor,
and Norine G. Johnson.) Many other women have held posi-
tions on boards and committees and been elected to offices in
divisions. All these developments signal substantial changes
in psychology as a whole over the past 30 years.
At its best, feminist psychology has generative capacity: It
challenges the guiding assumptions of the culture, raises
fundamental questions about social life, and provokes the
reexamination of what is taken for granted. By viewing the
knowledge, methods, and practices of psychology with a crit-
ical eye, feminist psychologists have provided generative
theory for the discipline. Their work incites debate, offers
new forms of social action, and ultimately can help to trans-
form social reality. Psychology has benefited from feminist
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