This essay explores the complex relationship among gender, professionalization, and ideology that developed as psychologists mobilized for World War II. Upon being excluded from mobilization plans by the male leaders of the profession, women psychologists organized the National Council of Women Psychologists to advance their interests. But while their male colleagues enjoyed new employment opportunities in the military services and government agencies, the women were confined largely to volunteer activities in their local communities. Although women psychologists succeeded in gaining representation on wartime committees and in drawing attention to their professional problems, they were unable to change the status quo in psychology. Situated in a cultural milieu that stressed the masculine nature of science, women psychologists were hampered by their own acceptance of a professional ideology of meritocratic reward, and remained ambivalent about their feminist activities.

Psychologists on the March argues that the Second World War had a profound impact on the modern psychological profession in America. Before the war, psychology was viewed largely as an academic discipline, drawing its ideology and personnel from the laboratory. Following the war, it was increasingly seen as a source of theory and practice to deal with mental health issues. With the support of the federal government, the field entered a prolonged period of exponential growth. With this growth came major changes in the institutional structure of the field that spread to include the epistemological foundations of psychology. This 1999 book is a sustained study of this important era in American psychology. Moving back and forth between collective and individual levels of analysis, it provides a narrative that weaves together the internal politics and demography of psychology in relation to the cultural environment.

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