Power and inequality are central concepts in feminist theory and practice. Yet, with a few notable exceptions, there is relatively little empirical research on gender and power within feminist psychology. A search of PsycINFO for articles published in "Psychology of Women Quarterly" for the years 2000-2011 yielded only 14 empirical articles with…

Reviews the characteristics of academic women in psychology, detailing what is known about women's participation in various academic roles, describing their successes in those roles, and discussing obstacles to their success in psychology as a discipline and in the academe more broadly. Recommendations for enhancing women's success in academia are…

Depression surges in adolescence, especially among girls. Most evidence indicates that the short allele of a polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) interacts with stress to influence the onset of depression. This effect appears to be less robust in adolescents, particularly among boys, and may be moderated…

Objectification theory posits that the tendency to view oneself as an object to be looked at and evaluated by others negatively affects girls', but not boys', subjective well-being. Although it has been established that women self-objectify more than men, research in this area has been limited to the study of adult college women. The aim in the…

The differences model, which argues that males and females are vastly different psychologically, dominates the popular media. Here, the author advances a very different view, the gender similarities hypothesis, which holds that males and females are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables. Results from a review of 46 meta-analyses…

Reviews psychological research on motivation and educational achievement, discussing gender and contributions by feminist researchers. Feminist psychologists note sex bias and methodological flaws in traditional research on achievement motivation, proposing improved models (Eccles' expectancy x value model of achievement behavior). Contrary to…

Meta-analyses of sex differences in attitudes and affect specific to mathematics found that effects were small in size and similar to sex differences in mathematics performance. When differences did exist, the pattern was for females to hold more negative attitudes than males. However, males held more sex-stereotyped attitudes than did females.…

Women's studies courses were found to have a positive impact on 156 female students' feminist identity development, as defined by Downing and Roush. Results suggest validity for the feminist identity development scale used as well as a new approach to evaluating women's studies courses. (CJS)

Identifies three theoretical and methodological tensions that shape the interest of researchers in innovative methods and influence their willingness to use the sorts of innovative methods described in this theme issue. Explores the use of qualitative research and the criteria by which it should be judged. (SLD)

Using feminist theory about the social construction of the female body, a scale was developed and validated to measure objectified body consciousness in young women (n=502) and middle-age women (n=151) using surveillance, body shame, and appearance control beliefs. The three scales were demonstrated to be distinct dimensions with acceptable…