Using Psychology’s Feminist Voices in the Classroom

Abstract

Just a few short decades ago, an area explicitly called feminist psychology did not exist (Stewart & Dottolo, 2006). Psychology of women courses and the materials needed to teach them did not appear until the early 1970s, and as Unger (2010) has shown, some of these earliest materials were not particularly feminist. Although today's students may not realize it, even the increased presence of women in the discipline is a fairly recent phenomenon. In 1960, only 17.5% of all doctoral degrees in psychology in the United States were awarded to women. By the year 2004, the proportion of women receiving doctorates in the field had risen to 67.4% (Women's Programs Office, American Psychological Association, 2006). Female students are now the majority in most psychology classrooms in North America. However, despite this shift, in the increasingly antifeminist, neoliberal environment that surrounds us, the future of courses and programs on women and gender, especially feminist ones, is at risk.Given this context, it seems especially important to educate students about the short history, but long past, of women and feminism in psychology. Even though feminist psychology did not coalesce until the 1970s, women (many of whom identified as feminists) have long been active and important contributors to psychology. Their voices and stories went largely undocumented until the 1970s when feminist activism brought their contributions to light. Psychology's Feminist Voices (www.fe ministvoices.com) is a unique multimedia digital archive that we have developed to highlight both the history and the current status of women and feminism in psychology. It is an advocacy tool for feminist psychology as well as an educational resource for instructors who want to include contextualized material about gender and feminism in their courses. Here, we give a brief history of the project and then present the teaching resources we have developed to help bring Psychology's Feminist Voices into the classroom. Psychology's Feminist Voices: A Short HistoryIn 2004, concerned about both the future and the past of feminism in psychology, I (A.R.) began an oral history project to collect and preserve the narratives of the women and men who strove to bring feminism to psychology in the 1970s. The project started modestly, but its greater potential soon became apparent: Instead of a preservation project with only a handful of early participants, why not expand it to explore the dynamic relationship between feminism and psychology as experienced by the very people who live it in their personal and professional lives? In addition to life narratives, I became interested in further questions: What was it like to be a feminist in psychology, then and now? How did our interview participants develop their feminist identities? How does their feminism enter their work? What do they see as the persistent challenges and future directions for the field? These questions became part of the interview protocol as the oral histories continued. The research team grew and the...

Neglect of the foreign invisible: Historiography and the navigation of conflicting sensibilities.

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“…I teach students about notable feminist psychologists and their contribution to psychology’s history, present, and future, an approach that was inspired by Ball et al (2013). These psychologists were obtained from the Psychology’s Feminist Voices Women Past , an important feminist pedagogic resource for teaching the history of women’s contribution to psychology (Ball et al, 2013).…”

“…I teach students about notable feminist psychologists and their contribution to psychology’s history, present, and future, an approach that was inspired by Ball et al (2013). These psychologists were obtained from the Psychology’s Feminist Voices Women Past , an important feminist pedagogic resource for teaching the history of women’s contribution to psychology (Ball et al, 2013). I then encourage students to pause the lecture and browse the Psychology’s Feminist Voices Presence Profiles (https://feministvoices.com/presence), an online repository of over 100 profiles of feminist researchers, which include detailed biographies, selected work, and contribution to psychology .…”