We explored how students' endorsements of essential (biological and personality) and constructed (socialization and contextual) explanations for gender differences changed from the start to the end of Psychology of Women (POW) classes along with their feminist attitudes. Results from surveys of 120 POW students from three universities indicated…

Explores individualism and conservatism in psychology, particularly in the psychology of women. Discusses causes and consequences of conservativism in the psychology of women. Questions rationale for studying gender differences instead of the society creating these differences. Presents an alternative construction to feminist research aimed at…

Feminist critiques of psychology have pointed to the strong tendency throughout the history of the discipline for researchers to assume one of two standards for human behavior: non-human primates, and men, more specifically, white, privileged men who often are college sophomores. Feminist scientists in other fields, as well as feminist…

We tested the hypothesis that students in psychology of women classes would perform better on materials covered by multiple-choice exams when the first author presented these materials with active learning versus lecture, autonomous readings, and video presentations alone. Across 3 classes, we coded exam items according to how the instructor…

Potential pitfalls for women pursuing academic careers in psychology as they make the transition from graduate student to assistant professor are discussed, along with ways to avoid or minimize some of these difficulties. Basic statistics on women's representation in the profession are examined, including two common explanations of the data.…

To identify a multivariate configuration of feminist beliefs best associated with optimal psychological functioning, 215 mostly White college women completed an online survey measuring their feminist beliefs (Feminist Perspectives Scale, Attitudes toward Feminism and the Women's Movement, sense of common fate, and Feminist Identity Composite) and…

Content analyses of television advertising document the ubiquity of traditional images of women, yet few studies have explored their impact. One noteworthy exception is the experiment by Geis, Brown, Jennings, and Porter (1984). These researchers found that the achievement aspirations of controls and women exposed to traditional images were lower…

An analysis of a sample of exit interviews from the first women cadets to graduate from West Point (N=62) revealed that the marginal peer acceptance of tokens within a competitive, somewhat constrained atmosphere discouraged the development of sponsorships. (Author/BL)

Surveyed and interviewed black and white women firefighters regarding subordination through imposed exclusion, tokenism, and omnirelevance of race/ethnicity in their perceptions of work experience. Both groups experienced insufficient instruction, hostility, silence, hypersupervision, insufficient support, stereotyping, and intertwining of race…