New Sexism in Couple Therapy: A Discursive Analysis

Abstract

The persistence of gender inequality in postindustrial societies is puzzling in light of a plethora of changes that destabilize it, including shifts in economy, legislation, and the proliferation of feminist politics. In family relations, such persistence manifests as a disconnect between couples aspiring to be more egalitarian yet continuing to enact traditional gender roles and hierarchies. There is an emerging consensus that gender inequality persists because of people's continued reliance on sexist ideology or gendered assumptions that constitute women as innately distinct from and inferior to men. Sexist ideology changes its form to accommodate to changing socio-economic conditions. Contemporary forms of sexism are old ways of legitimizing male power articulated in new and creative ways, often by incorporating feminist arguments. To effectively recognize and address "new sexism," scholars and practitioners require new, innovative research frameworks. Our objective in writing this article is two-fold. First, we seek to advance discursive (i.e., focused on language in use) approaches to the study of sexism. Second, we present the results of a discursive analysis of "new" sexist discourse in the context of couple therapy. The study provides preliminary evidence that, despite endorsing egalitarian norms, couples studied continue to rely on gender binaries and remain entrenched in old-fashioned patterns of gender inequality. Implications of these results for the practice of couple therapy and for future research are discussed.

The Primacy of Discourse in the Study of Gender in Family Therapy

“…In a recent discursive study (Sutherland et al, 2017), we showed how partners in intimate relationships evoked sexist notions (e.g., women are "natural" caregivers, men are not as relationally oriented as women) for specific social and rhetorical purposes. For example, one participant reported speech of other men (all the guys that I've talked to say the same thing 'what can you do, there is nothing that you can really do as a guy for the first couple of months') and produced complete unanimity among men (note the extreme case formulation "all" in all the guys).…”

“…We are informed by social constructionist and postmodern feminist perspectives and have had an ongoing interest in discourse and its link to gender and power, including in the context of family therapy (Sutherland, 2007;Sutherland, LaMarre, Rice, Hardt, & Jeffery, 2016;Sutherland, LaMarre, Rice, Hardt, & Le Couteur, 2017). The first author is a family therapist and the second and third authors are gender scholars.…”

Editorial: The Systemic in Couple and Family Research and Couple and Family Therapy

“…Moving beyond the conflicts about epistemology that can be a block to bringing science to practice, these postmodern clinicians and researchers have begun to look at research methodologies from psychotherapy research that are most compatible with their world view applied to couple and family therapy. Thus, we have seen use of patient-focused research assessing self-reported progress (Sparks & Duncan, 2018), various methods of linguistic analysis (Ong, Barnes, & Buus, 2019;Sutherland, LaMarre, Rice, Hardt, & Le Couteur, 2017) and research centered on physiological and interpersonal processes (Laitila et al, 2019;Seikkula, Karvonen, Kykyri, Penttonen, & Nyman-Salonen, 2018). Most of all, several of these researchers have tapped into the long-standing tradition of psychotherapy process research to look at the what is happening in the therapy process, especially in terms of client and therapist experience (Laitila et al, 2019;Lambert, 2016).…”

Editorial: The Impact of the Trump Administration on Families in the United States

“…We know a good deal about the processes that help people feel anchored from family science. Attachment can be secure or insecure (Sandberg, Bradford, & Brown, ); other people can be mentalized or not (Asen & Fonagy, ); reinforcements and exchanges can be stable and unstable (Fischer, Baucom, & Cohen, ); conversation can be life enhancing or coercive and destructive (Sutherland, LaMarre, Rice, Hardt, & Le Couteur, ). Trump elicits and promotes insecure attachment even in those close to him, modeling a chaotic bullying way to others that engenders more obvious bad behavior by others.…”