Psychology and Gender

Question 1

How has mainstream psych constructed gender identities?

Answer 1

1. the production of knowledge about men and women (alpha and beta biases)
2. gender and pathologisation - gender disorder, gay cure camps

Question 2

Feminist critique of psychology

Answer 2

1. psyc has been centered on white, westernised, middle-class, heterosexual male experiences
2. traditional topics of research= motivation, achievement and leadership are associated with male experiences
3. most psyc students are women yet senior academics are white men

Question 3

What is feminism?

Answer 3

• a theory and a practice
• the study of gender relations and women’s oppression
• a form of collective action with the aim of dismantling oppressive gendered power relations

Question 4

Marxist Feminism

Answer 4

• believe women’s oppressions are rooted in the capitalist economic system
• see women’s dependence on men who control captial as a key source of oppression
• want to expose gendered divisions of labour (domestic labour contributes to women’s lack of involvement in public sphere= economic dependence on men)

Question 5

Radical Feminism

Answer 5

• rooted in gay rights movement
• oppression rooted in patriarchy
• believe marriage and family as how a woman’s subordination is maintained
• to end patriarchy women need to mobilise through their shared identity as women

Question 6

Post-structuralist Feminism

Answer 6

• challenges the idea that identities are fixed
• believes identity is fluid, therefore men and women can not be determined
  0 the body: a site for inscription of masculinity and femininity through disciplinary practices
• split subject: men and women have multiple intersection identities
• agency: subject actively reinscribes and resists constructions of the self

Question 7

What can feminism contribute to critical psyc?

Answer 7

1. feminism challenges the representation of women in psyc discourse.
2. challenges the depoliticisation of professional psychology training as raceless, classless and degendered
3. challenges the feminisation of professional psyc that positions women as ‘caring’ but not ‘professional’

Question 8

Intersectionality research

Answer 8

• include women and people of colour in research
• not stigmatising groups- provide context
• qualitative approach
• open ended questions

Question 9

Psychology and homosexuality

Answer 9

• presented by psychology as person being sick, sinful, dangerous and attracted to children
• pathologised and medicalised
• psychologists justified the legal homophobia during apartheid- conversion therapy

Question 10

Gender-based violence and Psychology’s role

Answer 10

1. role of psych in shaping representation of abused women (pathologises, stereotyped femininity to describe women’s position in violent relationships)
2. disorders (battered women syndroms, co-dependency, self-defeating personality disorder)
3. focus on quantitative methods of domestic violence which overlooks complexity and trauma of violent relationships

Question 11

Gay rights movement in RSA

Answer 11

• focus on gay white men

- invisibility of black people, trans and lesbians

Question 12

representation of black lesbians in RSA

Answer 12

• butch, soccer playing, black women who are raped in black townships to ‘correct’ them
• undesirable, victimhood
• invisibilises lesbians which denies agency which = maintained patriarchy

Question 13

hegemonic masculinity

Answer 13

• dominant and ideal form of masculinity by which other masculinites are judged.
• establishes norm of male behaviour
• not all men have equal power- some men dominate over other men and women - this regulated male power over women and distributes power
• eg. white capitalism controls rap artists but rap artists control mentality towards women.

Question 14

How men have reacted to changes post-apartheid

Answer 14

1. reactive: try to protect old privilege, men ‘in crisis’, fear losing power, want to go back to old patriarchal values, rape of women as patriarchal policing
2. Accommodating: constructing manhood based on responsibility and wisdom
3. Progressive

Question 15

1 way of seeing feminist movement (white)

Answer 15

1. First wave: Feminist Empiricism (late 1800s-early 1900s- women’s suffrage, property rights and smash myth of gender difference)
2. Second Wave: Feminist Standpoint (1960s and 1970s- overthrowing patriarchy, women’s experiences as separate to men’s)- the beginning of black feminists being vocal about one sidedness of white feminist movement
3. Third Wave: Feminist Relativism (1990s- critical of scientific inquiry, beginning of intersectionality)

Question 16

other way of seeing feminist movement (black)

Answer 16

in USA:

1. Black Feminist Abolitionists (1800s, human and civil rights for newly emancipated slaves, Truth)
2. Community and Family Defence (late 1800s- early 1900s, resisting race and gender control, anti-lynching movement, domestic workers rights)
3. Civil Rights Movement (1960s, fight against Jim Crow laws, Rosa Parks, equality, education and poverty)

Question 17

Intersectional Theory (3)

Answer 17

1. Axes of Identity (race, gender, class etc)
2. Social Structural Oppressions- arrangements in society which divide people into groups, create inequalities and oppressions
3. Matrix of Domination:
   structural- law, religion, politics, only changed through war or revolution
   Disciplinary- exists to manage oppression, hides behind rules of fairness to cover up oppression, UCT, changes through insider resisitance
   Interpersonal- personal relationships, eg. xenophobia
   Hegemonic- makes oppression legitimate, values, ideas, language, eg. TV, media, change is through self-reeducation