Chapter 18 final version
Gender, Power, and Community
Psychology
Heather Gridley & Colleen Turner
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Warm-up
Exercise 1. Think of some ways that gender impacts on your
life. 2. What would you be more (or less) able to do if you
had been born a different sex? 3. Would this be the case if you had been born
somewhere else in the world? 4. If you awoke one day to discover that gender
equality had miraculously been achieved worldwide, how would you notice?
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Chapter Aims 1. To review the history of gender inequality in
society and within psychology. 2. To examine community psychology’s potential
contribution to gender equality. 1. To identify and encourage feminist visions of
wellness and liberation for women around the world. 2. To consider how we can participate in realising
such visions and values, as community psychologists and in our personal lives. |
Women
constitute half the world’s population,
perform nearly two-thirds
of its work hours,
receive one-tenth of the world’s income
and own less than one-hundredth
of the world’s property.
(United Nations Report, 1980)
A quarter of a century since
feminism’s ‘second wave’ was at its peak, the movement’s basic aim of equality for
women is far from being achieved on a global scale. A United Nations Population
Fund report (2000) describes gender discrimination as a global health issue,
directly associated with poverty, poor health and rapid population growth. In
Beijing in 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women adopted the slogan
‘Women’s rights are human rights,’ listing in its Platform for Action several
key areas of concern to all humanity where women’s rights still needed to be
addressed. Under each of these headings
were calls for global and local action. The areas most relevant and amenable to
community psychology research and practice are related to health and
well-being, participation in all levels of decision-making, power-sharing in a
non-violent and just society, action on violence against women, and equality of
access to resources. Central to all of these is the operation of power.
In this chapter we examine
community psychology’s historical and potential contribution to gender
equality. What would a vision of well-being and liberation for women around the
world be, and how can we know if we are part of the problem or part of the
solution, as community psychologists and in our personal lives? If sexism is
the problem, are feminisms the solution? Selected examples are used to anchor
the chapter.
We write from within our
‘natural communities’ (Huygens, 1988) as white Anglo-Celtic Australian women,
feminist community psychologists working for change within and beyond our
profession.
Historical Context
Because We’re Women
Because women’s work is never done
and is underpaid or boring or repetitious, and we’re the first to get the sack
and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped
it’s our fault and if we get bashed we must have provoked it and if we raise
our voices we’re nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we’re nymphos and if we
don’t we’re frigid and if we love women it’s because we can’t get a ‘real’ man
and if we ask our doctor too many questions we’re neurotic and/or pushy and if
we expect community care for children we’re selfish and if we stand up for our
rights we’re aggressive and ‘unfeminine’ and if we don’t we’re typical weak
females and if we want to get married we’re out to trap a man and if we don’t
we’re unnatural and because we still can’t get an adequate safe contraceptive
but men can walk on the moon and if we can’t cope or don’t want a pregnancy
we’re made to feel guilty about abortion and … for lots and lots of other
reasons we are part of the women’s liberation movement.
Joyce Stevens (1975), Women’s Electoral
Lobby (
Written for International Women’s Day 1975, this declaration has a decidedly western flavour, reflecting the priorities that gained attention as women in relatively affluent countries began to raise their collective voices. Yet throughout history every society has practised some form of oppression of women. In response there have been ongoing waves of feminist consciousness and action.
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In the twentieth-century western world, the timing of so-called second wave feminism paralleled the emergence of community psychology in the late 1960s. From the 1970s onwards, feminism drew on a range of perspectives, including liberal feminism (which emphasized equality), Marxist feminism (which made links with class and other forms of oppression), radical feminism (which argued that women should distance themselves from male norms), feminist psychology, postmodern feminism and feminisms within a range of cultural contexts (some African American women preferred to describe themselves as ‘womanist’). These various feminisms all work towards the common goal of improving women’s lives. Each has its own views on how improvements may be achieved and indeed what constitutes improvement. The vigorous ongoing debates among feminisms can confuse outsiders and frustrate feminist theorists and activists themselves – yet why would it be assumed, or even desirable, that all women, or all feminists, speak with a unified voice? (For a fuller introduction to feminist thought, see Tong, 1998).
Within psychology, both
feminist psychologists and community psychologists developed critiques of
mainstream psychology, while within the wider community, feminism and community
psychology took their place alongside related human rights movements such as
the gay liberation, civil rights, anti-apartheid and peace movements. In
Feminist psychologists directed their
critique towards psychology’s ‘mismeasure of women’ (Tavris, 1992) and the
individualisation and pathologisation of women’s collective distress (Astbury,
1996; Caplan, 1995). Women had not participated equally in the establishment of
psychology as a science, and feminists mistrusted its application to women’s
lives. “Psychology has nothing to say about what women are really like …
essentially because psychology does not know” (Weisstein, 1993, p.197).
The 1970s feminist slogan ‘the
personal is political’ meant that psychology was (and still is) fertile ground
for feminist action, and that political questions came to be seen as
psychology’s business. But some early attempts to paint women into the
psychological picture were themselves subject to critique as perpetuating
victim-blaming (for example, by suggesting that women’s ‘fear of success’ was
the real reason for the glass ceiling) or reinforcing gendered stereotypes of
masculinity and femininity - and leaving oppressive, inequitable social and
organizational structures unchallenged (Mednick, 1989). Examining texts and
courses on the psychology of women, Crowley-Long (1998, p.128) concludes that
“feminist psychology has adopted a much too narrow political focus” in drawing
almost exclusively from liberal feminist frameworks and positivist methods, and
not enough from radical and socialist alternatives. She argues that a broader
frame of reference would be more inclusive of marginalised groups and more
sensitive to “social and economic forces that shape the lives of women from
many diverse backgrounds”.
Community psychologists’ critique of
mainstream psychology emerged from its parent sub-disciplines of community
mental health (clinical psychology) and applied social psychology. Their
concerns focused less on measurement and therapy, and more on the settings in
which psychological research and practice took place – they set about
broadening their applications (for example, prevention and macro-level
intervention) and taking account of contexts (ecology and community). Thus they
distanced themselves from ‘the personal’ as reflecting psychology’s traditional
victim-blaming stance, and tended to take up ‘public’ ahead of ‘private’ causes
as their intervention targets.
Anne Mulvey’s (1988) landmark article
noted commonalities between community psychology and feminism – they shared
similar social critiques of victim-blaming ideologies, pushed beyond
individual, adjustment–oriented solutions, called for new paradigms beyond the
fragmentation and mystification of traditional disciplines, and developed
similar change models and strategies. Both focused on social policy, prevention
ahead of ‘cure’, advocacy, empowerment and the demystification of experts.
Feminist consciousness-raising groups resonated with community psychologists’
support for self-help groups and consumer-based movements.
But shared values and goals, and the
common experience of ‘swimming against the tide’ of mainstream psychology did
not lead to much integration between the two emergent sub-disciplines. Even
now, references to community psychology rarely appear in feminist psychology
literature, while feminist community psychologists have struggled to have
‘women’s issues’ acknowledged within community psychology’s agenda. Replication
of patriarchal patterns and power structures (Cohen & Gutek, 1991; Mulvey,
1988; Oliver & Hamerton, 1992) has seen a predominance of men in community
psychology research, teaching, leadership and publications, while frontline
practitioners and students are increasingly likely to be female, not to mention
at least 50% of the populations we purport to serve. In organized community
psychology (e.g., Society for Community Research & Action - SCRA, the
Australian Psychological Society College of Community Psychologists), women are
likely to be in maintenance or ‘housekeeping’ roles such as membership or
professional development, while more prestigious and public roles (e.g.,
president, journal editor) have been predominantly (though not exclusively)
‘men’s business’.
Why does this matter? Salazar and
Cook (2001) examined the nature and representation of research on violence
against women in community psychology journals as compared with mainstream
psychology literature. Useful research would be characterized by attention to
diversity in participant selection, action-oriented methods and macro rather
than micro-level analyses. Although these characteristics were indeed more
prevalent in community psychology research than elsewhere, there were so few
articles on violence against women that the impact of the difference remains
questionable.
How far have we come? The special
double issue of the American Journal of Community Psychology (Bond, Hill,
Mulvey, & Terenzio, 2000, 2001) provides a rich menu of feminist research
and action in community psychology. The special issue was organised around
seven themes linking community psychology with feminist theory and research:
contextualised understanding, attention to diversity, speaking from the
standpoints of oppressed groups, collaboration, multi-level, multi-method
approaches, reflexivity and action orientation. In the same year, a special
issue of the international journal Feminism and Psychology (Gavey, Lapsley
& Cram, 2001) was dedicated to feminist psychology in Aotearoa New
Community Psychology’s Founding Principles – Ecology, Prevention, Community
What do community
psychology’s founding fathers (and mothers) have to say about feminism/women’s
experiences? How far do their principles/approaches take us?
Ecology
Community psychology’s primary departure point from mainstream psychology was/is its emphasis on the central importance of context to any understanding of human behaviour. In practice this might mean conducting research in naturalistic settings, working with family or community systems rather than individuals, or seeking sociopolitical rather than intrapsychic explanations for presenting problems. Similarly, feminist theorists have argued for alternatives to reductionist approaches that narrow down and systematically decontextualise the phenomena to be studied.
Ecological models that
promote holistic understandings of the interrelatedness of all human
experiences can be helpful in addressing structural inequalities based on
gender. For example, changes that occur in women’s lives that are related to
their reproductive systems (e.g., menopause as disease) are often represented
as purely biomedical problems to be ‘cured.’ Psychological theories then add an
‘emotional disorder’ layer (e.g., PMS, ‘empty nest syndrome’) necessitating
therapeutic ‘treatment.’ An ecological perspective would take account of
society’s expectations and valuing of women at different points in their lives
– for example, the demands of parenting adolescents, caring for ageing parents,
renegotiating work roles, having less access to retirement fund benefits, and
finding oneself devalued by the appearance of gray hair (which for men is
sometimes considered an asset) all need to be factored into any understanding
of women’s lives at mid-life – not to mention the freedom and energy that might
be available to post-menopausal women.
From a feminist perspective, the downside of ecological and systems models is that they usually lack any power analysis, and can run the risk of promoting homeostatic ‘status quo’ solutions to problems that require fundamental change. Just as biological metaphors do not serve women well, with their implication that ‘biology is destiny,’ ecological explanations can lead to victim-blaming or unwarranted implication of less powerful groups or individuals in causal explanations. Between the rhetoric of terms like ‘ecology’ and ‘prevention’ and the reality that entrenched power is not easily given away, we need to keep asking what safeguards need to be in place to ensure that interventions don’t work against the groups they were intended to assist. False Memory Associations, and lobbying by men aggrieved by family law enforcement are examples of backlash to apparent concessions to women’s rights to safety and economic security.
Effective ecological conceptualizations must factor in a social justice component if they are to pave the way for ecological (systems-level) interventions that lead to social change. Theoretical models must involve naming of power differentials along with recognition of structural inequality as a primary cause of personal distress.
Community psychology students soon
become familiar with the cliff rescue metaphor of prevention – the notion that
it is better to repair the fence at the top of the cliff than to supply the
ambulance and paramedics to rescue those who fall over the edge. But have we
actually improved someone’s quality of life if all we’ve done is remove a
potential hazard? Suicide prevention programs that focus on taking sheets from
prisoners’ beds or raising the safety rails on a bridge do nothing to address
the poverty and desperation behind disproportionate incarceration rates among
Indigenous communities or suicide rates among young men in rural communities.
It is also obvious that ambulances
are still needed as well as fences. And prevention strategies can gain much
from the experiences of those who have jumped or fallen over the metaphorical
cliff. People living with HIV/AIDS continue to be heavily involved in designing
and delivering prevention strategies, including ‘safe sex’ education campaigns.
A prevention approach to depression
in women should address the oppression and abuse that underpin much of the
everyday experience of women across a range of circumstances (Bostock, 1997).
But many approaches that claim to be ‘preventive’ are narrowly focused on
medical explanations and ameliorative solutions. This is all too evident in
mental health initiatives that confine prevention to early identification of
genetic predispositions to bipolar disorder, for example, or early detection of
symptoms to encourage speedier referral for treatment, often with
antidepressant medication only.
There is increasing recognition in
international development contexts
that women’s empowerment and education are the keys to real change in
disadvantaged communities (Black, 1993; Van der Gaag, 1995). Grass-roots
community campaigns have often involved women fighting for the right to control
their fertility, to limit the sale of war toys, or to bear witness to the
‘disappearance’ of their children under repressive regimes.
The downside of community metaphors lies in the fact that a focus on public aspects of community can render women invisible by prioritising ‘public’ over ‘private’ concerns. The minimization of ‘domestic’ violence by police and other authorities as less serious than other forms of crime is a prime example. The uncritical acceptance of ‘community’ as a ‘spray-on solution’ (Bryson & Mowbray, 1981) can be fundamentalist when it means the subordination of legitimate concerns for ‘the greater good’ – women who were urged to leave the paid workforce to set up house in the post-World War II period were sacrificed to a narrow vision of community rebuilding. In such cases, a focus on community can have the effect of submerging women’s voices to the louder notes of (usually male, often patriarchal leaders) within particular communities.
As early as 1981, when the concept of community had been in currency in
public policy arenas for a decade, some analysts were questioning its claims to
radicalism in the light of its “systems-preserving effect” (Bryson &
Mowbray, 1981, p. 255). They argued that the usage of the term ‘community’
often suited conservative interests in its emphasis on an essential unity or
harmony of interests (rather than separation of interests from, say, a class or
gender perspective); and “in its use in characterizing a management model
geared to minimizing government expenditure” (p.265). The latter point has
particular relevance for women, who are frequently expected to provide unpaid
labour involved in what has come to be known as ‘emotion work’ (Winefield,
2001) – volunteering, telephone counseling, caregiving – when government
responsibilities are devolved to communities as a cost-saving measure.
Moreover, community consultation is a feel-good, widely supported notion, but
can act to rubber stamp decisions imposed by power elites.
Emerging Concepts – Power, Diversity, Subjectivity and Reflexivity
Psychology, with its individual focus, has particular
difficulty understanding power relations as socially constructed frameworks
that may be expressed by individuals, but are created in larger social
contexts.
(Burman, 1997, p. 146)
The operation of power is
central to all feminist analyses. Why do so many men use violence against
women? ‘Because they can,’ was one police superintendent’s pithy summing up.
Whether measured in terms of information, institutionalised authority,
resources, decision-making, coercion or privilege, power differentials can be
seen to constrain or expand the choices available to women and men in a wide
range of social contexts - not the pseudo-choice of coffee blends or mobile
phone covers, but real choices about how life is to be lived, individually and
collectively.
Feminist understandings of
power have shifted from unitary notions of something bad when men have it and
good when women have it towards recognition of its multiple levels of operation
(Kitzinger, 1991). Recent theorising and research on the operation of power
between women provides examples of these complexities (Beckwith, 1999).
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Power is not something we
have but something we swim in, a matter of discourse and practice rather than
quantity. And like racism, its operation in sexist terms has become more subtle
-- it is rare at least in western society for women to be openly referred to as
property, yet the notion is far from dead. A range of gendered power
disparities can be seen to increase the risk of a woman experiencing violence
within a relationship, and to decrease her power to escape it.
The fact that gendered power
differentials have narrowed dramatically over the past hundred years in
societies where women can vote, be educated, earn an independent income,
control their fertility and participate in sport and other hitherto
‘unladylike’ activities indicates that change, however slow, is possible. But
the experience of women under regimes such as the Taliban in
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Empowerment is a founding
metaphor within both community psychology and feminism. But its critics have
argued that it has been too easily reduced to simplistic New Age notions of
individual power (Kitzinger, 1991). And conservative governments have co-opted
the word ‘self-empowerment’ as a counter to the more radical demands of
minority groups for self-determination. We think empowerment is more usefully
understood as a process rather than an active verb (I cannot empower you, but
our conversation or active engagement might be experienced as empowering to one
or both of us). Ingrid Huygens (1995) asks ‘What happens to rape when all women
have learnt self-defence?’ She argues that more attention needs to be directed
towards ‘depowering the powerful,’ or at least towards creating space for
power-sharing partnerships.
“Power does not have to be repressive - it can actually facilitate better, more satisfying lives for people” (Perkins, 1991, p.136). The challenge for feminist community psychologists is to recognize both our relative privilege and relative powerlessness, as springboards to action. ‘The personal is political’ is an old feminist slogan, but in contemporary settings it means that community psychologists should always consider and acknowledge their relative power and privilege in any environment in which they work. Often that very power and privilege may be useful to the communities we are working with. At other times, our own powerlessness enables us to firmly align ourselves with other women’s experiences of oppression.
Subjectivity and Reflexivity
Warning – you
are about to enter big word territory!
Notions of subjectivity and reflexivity are drawn
from postmodern, poststructuralist and
social constructionist epistemologies that have challenged the heavy reliance
of psychology (and most modern sciences) on a positivist paradigm of
value-free, objective, measurement-focused research and a concomitant
commitment to ‘evidence-based’ practice. As the name suggests,
poststructuralist approaches question the existence of a single human
consciousness or reality, and hence emphasize plurality and tolerance of
difference. While community psychology aspires to a more contextualized,
ecologically valid and socially useful praxis, its entrenched North American
hegemony has largely been impervious to the emergence in
Where critical, community and feminist psychologies intersect is on the need to be context-specific in theory, research and practice. Each seeks to prioritise voices that need to be heard or that have been silenced on specific issues, and this is where the notion of subjectivity comes into play – the recognition that truth claims based on objective, value-free science are unsustainable. Feminist psychologists were among the first to open up space for multiple subjectivities to be acknowledged within the discipline. By separating the universal ‘he’ into the gendered subject ‘she/he’, they exposed the supposedly impartial, depersonalised observer as just another form of the male gaze.
As Mulvey et al. (2001) observe in collating reflections by feminist community psychologists on issues of relative privilege, the “relevance of concepts like voice [and subjectivity] to fostering progressive social change or to redistributing power depends on how they are understood and applied within particular, dynamic contexts.” (p. 908). Such contexts are inseparable from issues discussed earlier of power, diversity, and partnership. Whose voices are privileged and whose muted? Who is constructed as ‘other’ vis-a-vis the subjectivities of authors, researchers, theory-builders and practitioners – ‘the experts’?
Gavey (1989) presents compelling arguments for the incorporation of poststructuralist approaches within feminist psychology. Her work on the sexual coercion of women in heterosexual relationships was based on recognition that knowledge is “socially produced and inherently unstable” (p.459), along with language practices and the discourses in which they are constituted. Gavey gives an example of how a young woman might experience sexual coercion within a dominant “permissive sexuality” discourse that makes sex very difficult for a “liberated women” to refuse; alternative subject positions within different, non-dominant discourses (such as ”women’s rights”) lack an articulated and authorised language and are thus barely available to her:
Discourses vary in their authority. The
dominant discourses appear “natural”, denying their own partiality and gaining
their authority by appealing to common sense.
These discourses, which support and perpetuate existing power relations,
tend to constitute the subjectivity of most people most of the time (in a given
place and time). So, for example,
systems of meaning such as feminism are currently limited in their power
because they are marginalized and as yet unavailable to many women. (Gavey,
1989, p. 464)
Gavey and other feminist scholars acknowledge that poststructuralist approaches have drawbacks of their own, partly because they demand a new jargon that seems very academic, and risks alienating the very women whose perspectives they claim to include, and partly because their strategies of discourse analysis and deconstruction do not necessarily lead to advocacy for non-dominant groups or action for social justice. But within psychology, poststructuralist (or social constructionist - see Gergen, 1985) approaches are a breath of fresh air in a discipline long dominated by adherence to a narrow and impoverished version of empirical science.
Diversity
Diversity often refers to cultural or ethnic diversity but can and should encompass class, age, religion, abilities and sexual orientation. Sampson (1991), John (1998) and many others have argued that mainstream psychology needs to diversify the ‘voice’ that authors (and authorises) its claims to scientific status and its pronouncements on the nature of evidence and ‘truth.’ While cultural diversity is given lip-service, and guidelines have been developed to guard against ‘bias’ in research and practice, institutionalised practices often work against equal power and participation by all the diverse groups, interests and individuals that make up the communities we claim to serve.
Promoting diversity is no simple matter of token representation or assimilationist melting pots. Dimensions of diversity are also commonly experienced as dimensions of inequality and discrimination, often with compounding effects. Traustadottir (1997) describes the double discrimination often experienced by women with disabilities. The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission uses the notion of ‘intersectionality’ to conceptualise the consequences of the interaction between two or more forms of discrimination or systems of subordination. Racism is exhibited differently towards women than men. Indigenous women may be divided about whether to ‘go public’ on issues such as domestic violence. Similarly homophobia is more likely to be expressed as violence towards gay men and experienced as invisibility by lesbian women.
During the 1990s there was a vigorous debate between established forms of feminism and the increasingly visible feminisms of the third world and of indigenous women and women of colour. The point is made that first world feminism has largely advantaged middle class white women and has not had a flow-on effect to other women. In an Australian context, Moreton-Robinson(2000) observes that whiteness has not been seen, examined or discussed as a form of difference, therefore making whiteness the norm and allowing white middle class women to be the “embodiment of true womanhood” (p.xxiv). Some reasons advanced include the fear that, in sharing newfound power, advantaged women (read we) risk losing favour, ground or personal power to men from whom the power was gained. Meara and Day (2000) point out that “in the short term a more inclusive feminism is likely to have more integrity and less power” (p.260).
Embracing diversity demands a commitment on the part of community psychology. First, to expand the range of voices represented in its publications, theory-building and applications from token inclusion to a critical, sustainable mass. Next, beyond the ‘add voices’ strategy, comes the challenge of complexity – of recognising that we are all more than the sum of our demographic dimensions, and that often as not, the dimensions are in conflict. And are we truly prepared for the field to be transformed by the inclusion as equal partners of multiple ‘others’ we had assumed to have fewer resources or had defined by perceived deficits – homeless substance users, young single mothers, women in veils, asylum seekers, indigenous elders, clothing outworkers…? Potts (1995) noted that minority students [add working class communities and developing countries] are often drawn to community psychology ideals, only to find “we colonize them out of their passions” by imposing an underdeveloped and narrow [read white, male, North American] vision of the field. Is that the best we can do?
Partnership
The notion of partnership implies equality,
or at least an intention to work on an egalitarian basis. A partnership may be
forged for a particular, time-limited purpose, such as a grant application, or
on a long-term basis of shared interests. In community psychology contexts, the
reference is often to partnership as a metaphor for the researcher-community
relationship (
At the interpersonal level, largely thanks to the women’s movement, it has become increasingly common to refer to a spouse/lover/wife/husband as one’s ‘partner’, to avoid the gendered and heterosexist assumptions in traditional couple/marital discourses, and to promote the notion of equality in intimate relationships. Partnership can also encompass initiatives that foster alliances, for example, between women from different cultural backgrounds (Pheterson, 1990), or between women and men in the cause of everyday cultural reconciliation (McCartney & Turner, 2000). Eisler (1988) documented archaeological evidence of partnership societies pre-dating the patriarchal dominance that has characterized sociopolitical governance across most known societies.
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Like the term ‘community,’ partnership rhetoric can be pressed into less than egalitarian service. An information pamphlet produced by a pharmaceutical company blithely declares: ‘The relationship between you and your physician should be a partnership. Your physician’s role is to diagnose, treat and prescribe, while the patient can contribute by complying with medication and treatment regimes, and asking questions when necessary’ – hardly a marriage to die for, nor the model of partnership we had in mind for feminist community psychologists!
At community and structural levels, there is increasing recognition of the value of partnership models. Such models respect the independence, agency and integrity of groups with less direct access to power and resources, such as consumer groups, children or local residents, while drawing on the leverage and skills offered by more enabled or privileged groups, such as a university-based research team, a peak advocacy body or a men’s anti-violence network. Don Edgar (1995) makes a spirited argument for the importance of personal and structural partnerships between women and pro-feminist men in working to combat sexism: “Women make gains partly through their own efforts, partly through the necessary protection of anti-sexist legislation, partly through the gradual re-education of men and partly through the support of men who have always been disgusted by the aggressive display of male power” (p. 13).
A cautionary note from the frontline is that what once operated as grassroots consultation may now be reframed as partnership, but often between top level representatives – hospital managers, chief executives of local councils, government bureaucrats, corporate developers - with some public meetings thrown in. Agencies may be keen to promote consumer representation, but real partnerships that offer an equal share in decision-making to those most affected and least empowered often founder at the point where radical change threatens vested interest. Beckwith and Shopland (2001) described a partnership project based on feminist critical theory that involved a collective of service providers and service users, as a philosophical and practical model for addressing collective power differences. The partnership process was embraced by clients and supported by workers, but resisted by management of the host organisation, eventually leading to the disintegration of the process within its hierarchical context.
We noted earlier that diverse
feminisms all work towards the common goal of improving women’s lives. We
wonder what a world without sexism would look, feel, smell like? The
Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), who have been
fighting for over twenty years for personal and political liberation in
Afghanistan, provide a striking example of the determination of women in
enormously difficult circumstances to fight for their vision of a just society.
Psychologists or indeed any outsider working with communities must recognize that in any community they are working with, for or in there will be women. This seems obvious, but women are often invisible under ‘bigger issues’ of poverty, crime, terrorism, war, or more mainstream issues such as property development.
Beyond the acknowledgement that women are everywhere, the range of their voices should be sought out, considered and included. There is no one ‘women’s voice’ in any debate, but usually a multitude of women’s voices, sometimes in harmony with each other and in dissent with other voices, and at other times in harmony with sections of their communities and not with each other.
Not only must women’s voices be
included, they must be given equality
with men’s voices. After all, one of the most widely recognised goals of the
women’s movement is equality with men and also with each other.
The process of any activity is also historically important in feminist
valuing. Consultation or action should therefore be planned and undertaken in
accordance with clearly stated and transparent values. Equitable process is
often bypassed in an era when the dominant market-derived rhetoric defines
equality as a level playing field on which unregulated competition is free to
produce winners and losers. “Excessive commercialism of professional expertise
is anathema to the feminist agenda and the values that support it” (Meara &
Day, 2000, p.254-5). Relationships built in the course of community action
should be positive and sustaining – in feminist and community psychology terms,
the end never justifies the means.
For practitioners, community
psychology and feminist work needs a balance
between ‘ambulance’ work such as counselling, or the provision of soup kitchens
or home help, with proactive advocacy, structural reform and/or social action.
One activity supports and enables the other, in an action research loop.
Research, advocacy or social reform without connection to people living with
‘the problem’ risks being all head and no heart, while frontline work that is
all heart risks futility and burnout. Victorian Sexual Assault Centres have
operationalised this balance so that for each hour of counselling, workers
spend another on prevention or social action. Practice that encompasses such
"big picture" involvement as Reclaim the Night marches and rape law
reform can re-energise workers seeking channels for accumulating rage – and be
more effective as action for change.
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Conclusion
We have not offered in this chapter a definitive conceptualisation of a world without sexism or misogyny, or a vision of well-being and liberation for women throughout the world. We leave that task for you, the readers. In community psychology and feminist style, we have imagined roads leading to such a world, and described useful tools for building, signposting and maintaining such roads. We have pointed to potholes roadblocks, and bad weather that make the journey mostly slow, often boring and sometimes dangerous.
Feminism’s historical context reminds us that, in the words of a cigarette commercial, women ‘have come a long way baby.’ History also demonstrates that most changes are incremental and many gains fragile – as feminist community psychologists, we need to be vigilant about co-option by commercial interests (like tobacco companies!), erosion of hard-won rights, and the need to stay honest with ourselves about our relative power –some of us are privileged to be able to choose our level of commitment to gender and other forms of equality; for others, it is our day to day reality.
Resources
1. For an overview of global and economic issues affecting women, visit http://www.twnside.org.sg/women.htm
http://womensissues.about.com/cs/thirdworld/
2. Interesting links to sites dealing with feminism, activism and politics may be found at http://www.euronet.nl/~fullmoon/w-active.html
3. The Society for the Psychology of Women maintains an active website http://www.apa.org/divisions/div35/quarter.html
4. An excellent list of academic journals dealing with gender issues: http://www.ntu.ac.uk/lis/library/gender.pdf
5.
An amazing compilation is updated almost daily at the
6. An Australian site on, by and for women with disabilities: http://www.wwda.org.au
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From rhetoric to
reality Think back to the warm-up exercise at the start of this chapter – what specific aspects of gender equality were part of your vision? Your chosen issue might concern women’s health, sexuality, work, spirituality, cultural safety or any other topic involving the lives of women. (i)
Exercise in deconstruction: Questioning the text Find a
newspaper or magazine article relating to your chosen issue. The article can
be from a printed or online magazine or paper. Read the text and try to
answer the following questions. 1. Whose voices are represented mostly? Women
(or men) in positions of privilege? Are the voices of the women most affected
represented in the text? 2. What kinds of discourses surround or are
created within a particular text? Is equality implicit in the text? Is
patriarchy supported or subverted? 3. Where does the authority/authorship lie?
Who is cast as the expert? 3.
How is women’s experience made relevant to the issues? 3. Are gender relations visible in this text?
What forms of masculinity and femininity are being made available here? 4. What are the political implications of the
text? Is there a transformative message there? (ii)
Exercise in action: Applying the framework In the textbox above, we applied the principles of a feminist community psychology framework to the issue of violence against women. Think about the ways you would notice differences in the lives of women if your vision were realised, and list how each of those principles might (or might not) assist in working towards making your vision a reality. Hint: Questions that need to be
asked of any intervention include: Who is expected to change? Does it
materially improve the lives of women? How many? Which women? How can you
tell? |
|
TEXTBOX 1 Christianity’s Fluctuating Track Record
on Women (drawn from Ellerbe, 1995) v Jesus Christ: included women among his friends and followers, affirming Mary’s (non-traditional) and Martha’s (traditional) roles. v Council of Macon (584AD) – 43 bishops and 20 other men voted after lengthy debate about whether women were human and had souls – 32 voted yes, 31 no! v Middle Ages – Hildegard of Bingen and other educated abbesses exercised much power within and beyond their convents, until reined in and restricted to contemplative, cloistered roles by papal decree. v The Burning Times – women were blamed for the Black Death pandemic, resulting in the ‘holocaust’ of up to a million women. Any woman who dared to cure without having studied (from which they were banned) was to be declared a witch (Maleus Maleficarum - Hammer of the Witches, manual of the Inquisition). v Early 21st Century: Women priests ordained in (some) Anglican/episcopalian dioceses – but fewer permit bishops, and Catholic & Orthodox churches have barred debate on the subject. v Churches are often in the forefront of conservative backlash on reproductive rights, blocking international aid funds for family planning programs, promoting homophobic discourses, and retaining narrow definitions of women’s roles. v
Sexual abuse scandals challenge the
patriarchal structures that have enabled and even sanctioned abuse on a
previously unimagined scale. |
|
TEXTBOX 2 Women’s Work – Whose
Labour? The first world has become reliant on the skills of an elite of professional, educated women and expects them to continue in paid work, often for fifty or more hours per week. But neither the original 19th Century ‘eight hour day’ nor current campaigns factored in the second (domestic) shift worked by many women, or the ‘emotion work’ that is primarily women’s work (Winefield, 2001). Poor women have always acted as housemaids, wetnurses or nannies to wealthy families. Globalisation of the control of resources now means that women from poor countries such as the Philippines, Mexico or Eastern Europe are forced by economic necessity to leave their own children behind (or sometimes, to prostitute them) to provide cheap immigrant labour, often illegal, in more affluent countries. The exploitation of women in domestic work reproduces and widens the first/third world divide and makes real and reciprocal feminist alliances between women structurally more difficult, both within the first world and between the first and third worlds (cf., Anderson, 2000). Privileged women with a conscience, like Naomi Wolf (2001), can see the inequities operating in their (our) lives: I learned
that if I sat in a park with our baby and chatted with an immigrant nanny who
was wiping the drool of a white baby … within minutes she would show me a
photo of her own children far away, whom she might not have seen for
years. And her eyes would fill with
tears… These women must often cross oceans and leave their children, big kids
and small, with relatives. They often live in rooms at the margins of other
people’s families….so that they (the children) can have school uniforms and
good food, education and a better chance at life. (p. 219). |
|
TEXTBOX 3 Putting Vision
into Action: Stopping Violence Against Women It was impossible
to find any historical period in which there were no formulae … specifying
the conditions under which a wife was deserving of a good clout. (Dobash & Dobash, 1979, p.31) This is my weapon, this is my gun; one is
for fighting, the other for fun (Traditional military drill chant, origin unknown) Violence against women
is as public as the tools of war, as global as gender inequality, and as
private as the family home. As such, it is one of the most pervasive yet
least acknowledged human rights abuses throughout the world (Amnesty
International, 2001; Heise, 1993). A feminist community psychology approach
emphasises the need for fundamental social change to remove the cultural
supports of violence against women. How does each of the key principles
outlined in this chapter apply to such a challenge? Community: Tackling violence must be acknowledged as a
community responsibility, not a private matter. Past approaches that see
violence against women as an individual or a relationship problem will lead
to practices that are victim-blaming and unsafe. Ecology: Violence against women must be
located in its full social and historical context of gender and power. At the
relational level, violence must be viewed in terms of its controlling effects
rather than stated intentions. However, ecologically derived explanations
such as ‘the cycle of violence’ or ‘the dance of anger’ (Lerner, 1985) are
challenged by feminists who argue that they assign women a role in
precipitating or maintaining violent behaviour patterns by their intimate
partners (‘it takes two to tango!’) (e.g.,
McGregor, 1990; Loughnan, 1999). |
|
Subjectivity/reflexivity: Violence is both a social construct and a (painfully) lived
experience – feminist theories define violence as a product of the social
construction of |
|
Does it deal with violence in terms
of gender and power issues? Does it couch the problem in a gender blind way
e.g., ‘the violent couple’? Does it encourage the perpetrator to take
responsibility for the violence? Does it blame the victim in any way? Does it
directly confront the violence as a central issue OR as a side issue to a
‘larger’ problem, a ‘byproduct’ of a bad relationship? Does it serve to limit
perpetrators’ power by enforcing legal sanctions? Does it work to expand
victims’ options in housing, income support, job opportunities, legal
redress, crime compensation, parenting support? How does it serve to narrow
the gender/power gaps at global, community and interpersonal levels that
facilitate violence against women? |
Bio Paragraphs
Heather Gridley coordinates one of Australia’s two
postgraduate programs in Community Psychology, at Victoria University in
Melbourne. Her interest in community psychology stemmed from her work in
community health, where she became aware of the limitations of interventions
directed solely at individuals. Heather’s teaching, research and practice are
based on feminist principles, and in 1995 she received the Australian
Psychological Society’s (APS) Elaine Dignan Award for significant contributions
concerning women and psychology. She has held national positions in both the
APS College of Community Psychologists and Women and Psychology Interest Group,
and has served two terms on the APS Board of Directors. Her career history as a
humanities-based psychologist with a passionate commitment to social justice
bridges the practitioner-academic divide.
Colleen Turner’s career journey spans more than a
decade in applied research and community-based practice. Her work in aged and
disability services in local government, migrant women’s health, the Victorian
AIDS Council, and earlier, within the trade union sector, together indicate the
breadth and grounded nature of her experience. Colleen served on the APS Board
as Director of Social Issues, bringing to the role a strong personal background
and work record of achievement in real-world social issues. She is currently
working with the Australian Institute for Family Studies, and as a sole parent
of a young child, her situation gives her a high level of credibility and
accessibility vis-à-vis the life experiences of Australian families.