EC#2: Summarize an empirical article.

Special Anniversary Section

The Social Psychology of Sex and Gender: From Gender Differences to Doing Gender

Stephanie A. Shields 1

and Elaine C. Dicicco 1

The social psychology of gender is a major, if qualified,

success story of contemporary feminist psychology. The

breadth and intellectual vigor of the field is reflected in the

following six commentaries in the broadly defined area of

the Social Psychology of Gender which were commissioned

for this third of four 35th anniversary sections to feature brief

retrospectives by authors of highly cited PWQ articles.

Our goal in this section’s introduction is to provide a brief

history of the development of this area, placing the articles

described in the commentaries into this historical context.

The six articles in this special section, individually and taken

together, identify significant turning points in the social psy-

chology of gender. We focus on how, within a few brief

years, the study of gender in psychology underwent massive

transformation. 1

The social psychology of gender has grown to become a

thriving, scientifically sound research theme that encom-

passes a wide variety of topics and questions. The story of

how this came to be has been told from a number of perspec-

tives (e.g., Crawford & Marecek, 1989; Deaux, 1999;

Rutherford, Vaughn-Blount, & Ball, 2010; Unger, 1998).

Here, we focus on how, from psychology of gender’s murky

beginnings in early 20th century Freudian personality theory

and even deeper roots in androcentric paternalism of 19th

century science (Shields, 1975, 1982; Shields & Bhatia,

2009), feminist psychologists have shaped how sex and gen-

der are scientifically defined, theorized, and studied. Over the

course of the second half of the 20th century, feminist psy-

chologists challenged psychology’s long-standing equation

of female with defect and the psychology of gender with cat-

aloging sex differences (Marecek, Kimmel, Crawford, &

Hare-Mustin, 2003; Rutherford & Granek, 2010).

We identify three intertwined streams of investigation

from which the contemporary psychology of gender grew:

(a) research focusing on gender identity as a feature of per-

sonality, (b) research on behavioral sex differences, and (c)

research on gender roles and the study of gender in social

context. We interweave into this story how each of the six

key articles highlighted in this special section illustrate turn-

ing points in that history. We then describe the critical

importance of networks and mentors toward making the

research reported in those articles possible. We conclude

with our thoughts on future directions in the social psychol-

ogy of gender.

Three Streams of Research

Personality and Gender Identity

Sigmund Freud’s visit to the United States in 1909 (at G.

Stanley Hall’s invitation) was a signal moment for both Freu-

dian and American psychology. Although many American

scientists were disdainful of Freud’s ideas, he found a culture

receptive to his ideas about unconscious motivation and the

structure of personality; in turn, U.S. popular culture found

a psychological theory that meshed with American sensibil-

ities (Fancher, 2000; Lepore, 2011). One by-product of this

love affair between Freud’s theory and U.S. popular and

intellectual culture is the instant map of gender difference

that came with it. The core idea was that male–female psy-

chological differences were natural, deep-seated, and of pro-

found personal and social consequence. This proposal easily

built upon the already-accepted Anglo-American belief in

‘‘natural’’ gender differences as differentiating ‘‘advanced’’

races from the more ‘‘primitive’’ (Shields & Bhatia, 2009).

Furthermore, biological sex, gender identity, adherence to

gender roles, and sexual orientation were considered mono-

lithic, that is, completely consistent with one another in

‘‘normal’’ individuals. For example, the healthy and normal

girl or woman identified herself as female, conformed to

cultural expectations for appropriate feminine personality

and demeanor, and was heterosexual. These ideas, of

course, built on already prevailing beliefs and had long-

term effects for how gender was studied by psychologists.

1 Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University

Park, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Stephanie A. Shields, Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State

University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

Email: [email protected]

Psychology of Women Quarterly 35(3) 491-499 ª The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0361684311414823 http://pwq.sagepub.com

The Freudian version of gender psychology held sway

until feminist psychologists began to challenge academic and

clinical formulations of female nature in the 1960s. (Earlier

challenges to a female-deficit model had come from within

the psychoanalytic community, most notably by Karen Hor-

ney and Clara Thompson, but their theories are beyond the

scope of this commentary.) Behaviorism, the dominant para-

digm in U.S. academic psychology through most of the first

half of the 20th century, was not concerned with individual

differences (such as gender differences) or personality,

which further pushed the psychology of women and gender

under the Freudian umbrella. By that time, alternative views

(e.g., Seward, 1946) and the work of feminist psychologists

from earlier in the century (e.g., Calkins, 1896; Hollingworth,

1914, 1916; Tanner, 1896; Thompson, 1903) had been written

out of histories of psychology.

The systematic search for stable, enduring traits that

unambiguously distinguish one sex psychologically from the

other was an enterprise begun in earnest in the 1930s. The

first masculinity/femininity (M/F) scale was developed by

Terman and Miles (1936), who were best known for research

with high-intelligence quotient (IQ) children. The test

comprised over 450 items related to gender-typed interests,

opinions, and emotional reactions and was normed with stu-

dents in elementary and junior high school. The M/F scale

proved impossible to validate against external criteria because

it had low reliability and was uncorrelated with behavioral mea-

sures predicted to be related to it. Nevertheless, the authors

argued the utility of the scale in revealing ‘‘existing differences

in mental masculinity and femininity however caused’’ (Ter-

man & Miles, 1936, p. 6). The impetus behind their research

was the desire to create an assessment tool that could reliably

detect a propensity for ‘‘sexual inversion’’ (in the language of

psychology at the time), that is, homosexuality. The gay male

was presumed to be psychologically feminine, and Terman

and Miles wished to demonstrate that boys of high IQ were

no more likely to be sexual inverts than other boys.

We describe Terman and Miles’ (1936) project in some

detail for two reasons. First, it inspired other attempts to mea-

sure M/F through participants’ endorsement of gender stereo-

types, assuming that psychological gender was a deep-seated

and enduring trait and was difficult to measure accurately

without disguising the purpose of the test (Lewin, 1984a,

1984b; Morawski, 1987). Second, it uncovers the assumption

that sexual orientation is revealed through endorsement of

gender stereotypes and culturally constructed gender roles.

For example, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inven-

tory (MMPI) femininity scale was famously normed on a

group of 13 homosexual men (Lewin, 1984b)! By the early 1970s, the assumption that M/F represented

opposite anchors on a unidimensional, bipolar continuum was

challenged by a new generation of feminist psychologists

(Bem, 1974; Constantinople, 1973). The notion of psycholo-

gical M/F as a unified trait-like feature of personality was

retained, but now its elements (femininity and masculinity)

were hypothesized to be orthogonal, each expressed on its

own low to high continuum. Thus, an individual could be

described as high or low F and high or low M. The original

aim of M/F tests—to identify sexual inverts—was eclipsed

by concerns with a new kind of psychological health—andro-

gyny, that is, rating oneself as high on both positive stereoty-

pical M and F attributes (e.g., Bem, 1981). Despite the

patently sex-stereotypical content of M/F inventories, many

embraced the view that the extent to which an individual is

willing to describe herself or himself in terms of stereotypes

is a legitimate indicator of healthy psychological gender (see

Morawski, 1987, for an insightful critique). Just as Terman

and Miles (1936) discovered 40 years earlier, these new

M/F scales did not serve as good predictors of either gen-

dered behavior or other dimensions of gender.

In the present anniversary section, Spence’s (2011) over-

view of the course of her research vividly documents the shift

from reliance on the personality approach (as reflected in the

use of M/F scales) to a more complex conceptualization of

gender. For example, early in her work on gender, Spence

and her colleagues found that M/F scores were uncorrelated,

independent constructs and were therefore inappropriately

represented as opposite ends of a single continuum (Spence,

Helmreich, & Stapp, 1975). Later, she showed that higher

masculinity scores were associated with higher self-esteem

in both men and women, countering the idea that one needed

to score highly on both the M and the F scales (considered to

be ‘‘androgynous’’) to be psychologically healthy (Spence

& Helmreich, 1980). This study, and others that followed,

revealed the multidimensionality of gender—that is, ‘‘gen-

der’’ encompasses distinct factors that cannot be used to pre-

dict or make generalizations about gender-related attitudes

or behaviors (Spence, 1993).

Before we move to the second stream of research that con-

tributed to present-day psychology of gender, we should

make two additional points. First, John Money’s (e.g., Money

& Erhardt, 1972) research on prenatal and postnatal gender

development also challenged a unified trait-like view of gen-

der and advanced the idea that sex should be differentiated

from gender (Muelenhard & Peterson, 2011). Money asserted

that prenatal and postnatal gender differentiation had multi-

ple influences; that sex of upbringing, not biology, dictated

core gender identity (which he defined as the sense of oneself

as female or male); and that sexual orientation and what he

termed sex-coded role (gender role) were independent fea-

tures of gender differentiation. Years later, Money was shown

to be tragically wrong regarding the exclusive influence of

nurture on core gender identity, having based his ‘‘evidence’’

on questionable ethical treatment of patients (Colapinto,

2006). That said, when initially published, his work appealed

to feminist psychologists who were questioning the prevail-

ing view of gender as the simple product of genes and hor-

mones and who were theorizing the power of socialization

in determining gendered beliefs, values, and behavior. (For

example, see the popular textbook by Tavris & Offir, 1977.)

492 Psychology of Women Quarterly 35(3)

Second, this history of conceptualizing ‘‘gender’’ as

exclusively or primarily an aspect of personality masked the

power of beliefs about gender in influencing people’s percep-

tion of, and expectations regarding, the behavior of themselves

and others. Over the past 40-plus years, an abundance of

research has demonstrated the structural complexity of gender

stereotypes and their power to influence others’ perceptions

(e.g., Eagly & Kite, 1987; Kite, Deaux, & Haines, 2008) and,

in some circumstances, even recall of one’s own behavior

(Robinson, Johnson, & Shields, 1998).

Kite and Deaux (1987), for example, found that stereo-

types of lesbians and gay men largely reflected the inversion

model—lesbians as masculine; gay men as feminine—that

had been the rationale for decades of M/F research (see Kite,

2011). Mary Kite and Kay Deaux also found that the stereo-

type of gay men is not simply equivalent to the stereotype of

heterosexual women, nor is the stereotype of lesbians identi-

cal to the stereotype of heterosexual men. Their work was

influential because it was an important early exploration of

how intersections of homosexual/heterosexual and woman/

man occupy distinctly different identity positions in people’s

conceptualization of stereotypes. To this day, their study

remains one of the few published that examines stereotype

content of both lesbians and gay men. (For a recent exception,

see Lehavot, King, & Simoni, 2011, in this issue.) In her com-

mentary, Kite (2011) also reminds us that intersections of

sexual orientation and racial ethnicity have yet to be system-

atically examined by psychologists.

Behavioral Sex Differences

Within psychodynamically tinted, gender-as-personality psy-

chological research in the United States, empirical investiga-

tion of gender almost exclusively focused on behavioral sex

differences. (There was also a thriving research stream

devoted to women’s psychological disorders, especially if

connected to the menstrual cycle or sexuality, such as ‘‘cli-

torid’’ versus ‘‘uterine’’ women [Meyers, 1966], but this tan-

gent is beyond the scope of the present article.)

Browsing the psychological research literature published

during the 1960s and onward reveals a growing number of

themes relevant to the social psychology of gender. One

theme is women and employment, ranging from women’s

comparative fitness for work to the effects of employed moth-

ers on their children (e.g., Nye & Hoffman, 1963). Most of

this research, however, was conducted from a deficit perspec-

tive which presumed that individual employed women were

responsible for figuring out how to balance the demands of

work and family responsibilities. Herman and Gyllstrom’s

(1977) article on interrole and intrarole conflict, reconsidered

by Brett (2011), was important in challenging the truism that

women could not be good workers because of competing car-

egiving and domestic roles. They showed that it was not gen-

der, but rather the number of roles between home and work

one had to juggle that determined perceived interrole

conflict—that is, women and men with children who worked

full time reported similar amounts of role conflict. Their orig-

inal question of the toll of work and family for women is one

that reverberates today. For instance, mothers still face more

challenges (Crosby, Williams, & Biernat, 2004) than fathers

in the workplace—mothers are hired less frequently, are

given lower salaries, and are less likely to be hired than

fathers because mothers are seen as less committed to their

job (Correll, Benard, & Paik, 2007)—and even young adult

women continue to expect to shoulder a disproportionate

amount of domestic labor and childcare, despite their endor-

sement of egalitarian relationships (Askari, Liss, Erchull,

Staebell, & Axelson, 2010).

In the 1970s, women were becoming a serious presence

in American psychology graduate programs because of

legal changes such as clarifications of the 1964 Civil Rights

Act and Title IX (1972) that prohibited discrimination on

the basis of sex at any educational program receiving fed-

eral funds. Many of these women students identified as

feminists, and they pointed out (as had an earlier generation

of feminist psychologists) that socialization and societal

expectation, not simply biology, were important in under-

standing why and how gender differences are produced.

An excellent example of this theme is Eccles’ work

(1987, 1994), which exemplifies how theory is made stron-

ger when the question shifts from a gender-differences per-

spective to one that examines gender in a social context (a

perspective we discuss further in the following section).

Instead of asking why women do not make the same career

choices as men, Eccles (2011) asked, both then and now,

why men and women make the choices they do. Her

expectancy-value model (Eccles et al., 1983) complicated

the idea that the reasons for making achievement-related

decisions reside solely within the individual. She demon-

strated how the social environment affects individuals’

expectations of success, ideas about the importance of a

task, and the perception of available options. Her model has

significantly impacted the way social psychologists think

about gender differences in achievement.

The 1970s was also characterized by the struggle to better

define what the feminist study of gender encompasses and

how thinking about ‘‘gender’’ is different from amassing a

list of sex-related differences. Initially, feminists compiled

and cataloged conference articles and published research

as a way to make sense of the field characterized both by the

conventional gender-as-personality framework and also by a

newly emerging emphasis on studying gender as a function

of social context (e.g., Baer & Sherif, 1974; Sherman,

1971). Another move to define the field revolved around

language: how to define the boundaries of gender. By the

late 1970s, it was becoming common for feminist psychol-

ogists to differentiate between sex as categorization on the

basis of anatomy and physiology and gender as a culturally

defined set of meanings attached to sex and sex difference

(Unger, 1979).

Shields and Dicicco 493

A parallel interest in racial ethnic psychology (Leong,

2009; Pickren, 2004) rejected the Anglo-American framing

of ‘‘race psychology’’ (see Richards, 1997, for a history of

race psychology), but concern with other social identities,

such as social class (Lott & Bullock, 2007), came much later.

In any event, these identity-based areas of research devel-

oped essentially independently of one another. Specifically,

‘‘gender’’ was primarily the study of White women, and

‘‘race’’ was largely the study of African Americans with

no particular attention to gender. By the 1980s, there was

much discussion of intersections of gender with other

dimensions of social identity (e.g., Boston Lesbian Psychol-

ogies Collective, 1987; Fine & Asch, 1988), but intersec-

tionality, as a theoretical perspective reflected in research

practices has only come to the forefront in psychology in

recent years (e.g., Shields, 2008).

Debates about gender differences research continue to the

present (e.g., Kimball, 1995, 2001). At one level, the debate

revolves around whether difference or similarity should be

emphasized. For example, comparing women and men

glosses over within-group differences, accentuates the impor-

tance of difference between groups over similarities, and

reifies the categories of woman/man as having some explana-

tory standing on their own. Hyde (2005) has proposed an

alternative approach, namely that gender similarities, not dif-

ferences, are more scientifically appropriate to study. At

another level, arguing difference/similarity masks what many

believe, including ourselves, are the more pressing issues. In

a cogent critique of differences research, Fine and Gordon

(1989, p. 151) assert that ‘‘this almost exclusive construction

of gender-as-difference functions inside psychology as a

political and scientific diversion away from the questions of

power, social context, meaning, and braided subjectivities’’

(also see Lott, 1997). Indeed, gender-as-difference is the

principal way gender is discussed and explained in

popular-culture discourse which, in turn, is absorbed into

scientific discourse (Danziger, 1997; Richards, 2002;

Shields & Bhatia, 2009). The end result is that gender-as-

difference is transformed into an even less satisfactory

difference-as-explanation.

The alternative to gender-as-difference requires first the

recognition that gender beliefs and behaviors are ideologies

embedded in social-structural systems. It also requires acknowl-

edging what feminist psychologists have long asserted: There

is always a political dimension to the study of behavior, espe-

cially when that behavior is overtly connected to systems of

power and status.

From gender roles to gender in context. The first generation of feminist psychologists had viewed social learning and

expectations as important to gender differences in behavior.

It is not surprising that, with the revival of feminist psychol-

ogy in the 1960s, the importance of social factors were

again highlighted. As for first-generation feminists in psy-

chology, gender learning was conceptualized as the

experience of having one’s behavior, beliefs, and attitudes

shaped in terms of culturally defined, gender-specific

roles—but with something of a different look. One new

development was describing gender roles as embedded in

larger, interlocking social-structural systems of power. Ear-

lier feminist psychologists had connected women’s roles

and socially sanctioned limits on women’s behavior to a

broader system of patriarchal domination, but they stopped

short of seeing gender oppression as inextricably linked to

other systems of oppression, such as class and race.

By the mid-1980s, we see the realization of the previous

decade’s efforts in a phenomenally creative and influential

set of publications that advanced gender theory, measure-

ment, and the critique of gender psychology’s business as

usual. The year 1987, for example, was something of a

watershed in the advancement of a feminist social psychol-

ogy of gender, with a number of classic books and articles

published (to cite but a few: Deaux & Major, 1987; Eagly,

1987; Eccles, 1987; West & Zimmerman, 1987). The range

and influence of work published during this period is even

more noteworthy because the late 1980s were also a period

of significant backlash against feminist progress toward

women’s opportunity and equality that had been made in the

1970s (Faludi, 1991). Indeed, backlash was evident as early

as 1979 when the Equal Rights Amendment stalled, three

states short of ratification.

The construct of self-silencing is a good example of a

social-role approach that situates role within systems of

oppression. Jack and Dill (1992) asserted the radical idea that

adherence to expectations for feminine behavior is a core

feature of clinical depression in women. Their approach

contrasts with the diathesis-stress models of depression

that focus on the individual as the problem and with the

psychoanalytic view of women’s self-silencing as ‘‘over

dependence on oral strivings’’ (Jack, 2011, p. 524). Instead,

they situate depression in women’s response to cultural

scripts of being a ‘‘good woman’’ and probe how adherence

to those scripts negatively affects women’s relational/self-

schemas, insights that remain relevant today (Jack, 2011;

Shouse & Nilsson, 2011).

Alternatives to the older gender-as-trait models stressed

the importance of considering gender-in-context. Gender-

in-context models (e.g., Deaux & Major, 1987) emphasized

that the individual’s gender repertoire was only one ingredi-

ent in any social situation. Other individuals with whom the

person was interacting had their own expectations about the

other person’s behavior and their own repertoire of gender-

related attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. The situation, too,

could be described as one that varied in how ‘‘gendered’’ it

was and in what ways it was gendered. For example, in both

a board meeting with only one token woman present and a

heterosexual date, gender is salient, but observers and targets

carry different gender-related expectations for each situation.

Thus, whether gender-typed behavior is observed depends on

the interaction among person, observer, and social context.

494 Psychology of Women Quarterly 35(3)

This approach has helped researchers sort out why gender of

participant seems to have a ‘‘now you see it, now you don’t’’

character (Deaux & Major, 1987). A relatively early example

of the gender-in-context approach is Berman’s (1980) review

of her own and others’ research on responsiveness to infants.

Women’s and men’s responses to infants varied greatly

depending on the physical and social qualities of the situa-

tion, the response required, and the research participant’s

experimental or prior role relationship with the young.

The move away from gender as simply a trait or a role sti-

mulated efforts to measure the parameters of beliefs about

gender, including investigation of gender stereotypes, their

persistence and effects on social interaction, and the sexist

beliefs that underlie and sustain reliance on stereotypes. Glick

and Fiske (1997) bring us squarely to the issue at the center of

the social psychology of gender: Its relation to social-

structural systems of patriarchy that maintain and promote

institutions and practices of inequity. Their article reports

the development and validation of the widely used Ambiva-

lent Sexism Inventory (ASI). They begin with the fact that

sexism is not like other types of out-group prejudice, yet,

it has similar consequences. Specifically, women and men

are interdependent and cannot avoid each other, as one can

do with other out-groups. This connectivity allows women to be

seen in an apparently positive way (Glick & Fiske, 2011). Like

Spence and Helmreich’s (1972) AWS and other specialized

instruments for measuring sexism (e.g., Swim & Cohen,

1997; Tougas, Brown, Beaton, & Joly, 1995), the ASI tunes into

what makes sexism ‘‘special’’—that is, what makes it possible

to endorse a patriarchal system that devalues women and, simul-

taneously, appears to be one that values women. It is the gender

version of the often heard adage: ‘‘I’m not prejudiced, but . . . .’’ The social constructionist approach to gender similarly

presses the gender-in-context position further. The construc-

tionist perspective conceives of gender as a process—often

characterized as ‘‘doing gender’’—which simultaneously cre-

ates and reinforces cultural meanings of gender and the sys-

tems of power and oppression on which it rests (Bohan,

1993; Shields, 2002; West & Zimmerman, 1987). Gender

emerges through social interactions as a negotiated statement

of identity; that is, gender is not something that one achieves

over the course of development, but rather it is continually

practiced in social interactions large and small. Viewing gen-

der as a verb, a practice, helps us to understand why gender

systems are so difficult to root out or change. As sociologist

Dana Vannoy (2001, p. 511) points out: ‘‘Every moment

every day individuals have the opportunity to choose to

behave differently � to resist gender expectations associ- ated with control and deference,’’ and yet we do not. In fact,

even those of us who strive not to subscribe to gendered

norms of inequality are caught up in the ordinariness of

doing gender, such that ‘‘the taken-for-granted acting out

of nearly invisible expectations usually re-creates gender

inequality between men and women even if gender is irrele-

vant to the situation’’.

Making Feminist Research Possible: Networks and Mentors

We want to note one more common theme that struck us as

we each read through the commentaries and the papers on

which they are based. Across all six commentaries, we

noticed that the impetus for the work came from an ‘‘a-ha

moment’’ (or ‘‘click") in the author(s)’ own lived experience.

From our present-day vantage, it is easy to forget that just a

few years across our chronology made a huge difference in

how that realization could be acted on.

In the early 1960s, women were underrepresented in grad-

uate programs and were a rarity in research-oriented univer-

sities. Janet Spence was the lone female faculty member in

her psychology department in the mid-1960s. Women full-

professors (women of color and White women) are still

noticeably underrepresented at most research universities,

especially the most prestigious. But even underrepresented

is an improvement over only. By the late 1960s, gender ratios

were beginning to change, at least at the graduate level. This

change enabled many of us to have our first foray into femin-

ist psychology be through a collaborative venture with other

feminists, as Jacqueline Eccles collaborated with four other

feminist graduate students at UCLA. Eccles also points out

how her Expectancy-Value model came to an early and suc-

cessful fruition because of the fortuitous combination of an

NIE program officer who ‘‘got it,’’ involvement of engaged

students, and mentoring advice from Elizabeth Douvan.

(Douvan became the first president of the Society for the Psy-

chology of Women in 1973.) Jeanne Herman (Brett) and

Karen Kucynzki Gyllstrom undertook an innovative study

in the entirely new field of work-family because of their joint

interest in significant questions that other I/O psychologists

had overlooked. Moving forward a few more years, Mary

Kite and Dana Jack had successful feminist faculty mentors

(Kay Deaux and Carol Gilligan, respectively) to inspire them

and to work collaboratively with them. To move from a mar-

ginal position to the center also requires significant profes-

sional networks (e.g., Unger, Sheese, & Main, 2010), and

we see the importance of these networks, albeit gender

reversed, in the most recent case of Peter Glick who writes

of Susan Fiske’s openness to his sabbatical visit as the begin-

ning of their years’ long collaboration.

From Turning Points to Future Directions

Having looked at where the social psychology of gender

came from, we cannot resist ending this essay with some

thoughts about where the psychology of gender may be

headed. This charge is easier said than done. Each of us is

at a quite different point in our career: Elaine has just com-

pleted her first year in graduate school and is beginning to

pursue a dual degree in social psychology and women’s stud-

ies; Stephanie did her graduate work in the early 1970s and

has been deeply involved in feminist psychology throughout

Shields and Dicicco 495

her entire career. Despite these differences, we are both

motivated to be optimistic: Elaine is excited to become part

of the feminist psychology community and contribute to its

advancement; Stephanie, through thick and thin, has kept

faith in the potential of psychological science (broadly

defined) to be a vehicle for promoting positive social change.

With that caveat in mind, we see three important emerging

themes in the social psychology of gender.

Reliance on a Broader Palette of Research Methods

New methods and improved methods are coming on the

scene. We mention only two examples here, but our main

point is that we need to think more broadly about the range

of methods that lend themselves to feminist research on gen-

der. Whether the methods are easily compatible with feminist

research values or have less obvious potential, we have to

remain vigilantly feminist regarding the questions that we

ask, our partnerships with our participants, and our interpre-

tations of our findings.

First, a wide range of qualitative methods are at last mak-

ing inroads into the inner sanctum of conventional psycholo-

gical research methods. Qualitative work is often lauded as

an ideal feminist approach to research because it gives voice

to research participants and has the potential to level the

power relationship between researcher and participant. For

qualitative studies and mixed qualitative/quantitative meth-

ods to fulfill this promise, however, students need to be

exposed to the wide range of qualitative techniques avail-

able and receive adequate training in their use. Importantly,

too, exploration of qualitative and mixed methods helps

feminist researchers maintain a healthy skepticism regard-

ing ‘‘value-neutral’’ research and foster awareness of the

politics of the research process (e.g., Cosgrove & McHugh,

2010; Gergen, 2001)

Second, neuroscience techniques are here to stay. A fem-

inist research presence is important in neuroscience because,

if no one is there to point out boundary conditions or faulty

applications of the techniques, we risk witnessing a revival

of the 19 th

century psychology of gender that defined

women’s social-structural dilemmas as no more than an

expression of women’s (neuro)biology (Fine, 2008). But

beyond monitoring misapplication, brain imaging and other

behavioral biomarkers, such as salivary cortisol, should be

explored for what they might add to feminist research. For

example, they may contribute to building long-needed testa-

ble theories that address the complex interrelation of biologi-

cal, social, emotional, and cognitive events in constructing

and maintaining gendered behavior.

Intersectionality of Social Identities

For years, feminist psychologists have asserted that our

research must take into account the fact that social identities

do not function independently of one another. Recently we

see the beginnings of a move to take seriously the need to

modify old research practices or create new ones that enable

the study of intersectionality with some sophistication (e.g.,

Bowleg, 2008; Warner, 2008). Besides being a more accurate

representation of lived experience, an intersectionality per-

spective troubles the biological essentialism that flows from

unidimensional group comparisons. We noted earlier in our

paper some limitations associated with the gender differences

approach to research. It has also long been understood that

when two groups are compared, one inevitably serves as the

standard against which the other is measured. Such an andro-

centric comparison of women and men, for example, glosses

over within-group differences, accentuates the importance of

difference between groups, and reifies the categories of

woman/man as having some explanatory standing on their

own (Hare-Mustin & Marecek, 1988). When the groups are

construed as ‘‘natural’’ groups (women/men; Black/White;

even rich/poor), the explanatory path of least resistance is

an attribution to nature/biology/ancestral conditions.

Gender as Systems of Status and Power Relations

There is still a long way to go in sorting out how gender, sta-

tus, and power operate within specific social contexts. In

social psychological research, power is often conceptualized

as an attribute of individuals whose status grants them posi-

tion and resources to influence others. Most social psycho-

logical research concerned with power tends to focus on the

effects of power on the less powerful and the powerholders,

so the contexts studied are those in which status and power

go together. When we apply questions of power to gender,

however, it can be important to disaggregate the two con-

structs, particularly if we do so keeping intersectionality

in mind. Intersections create both oppression and opportu-

nity (Baca Zinn & Thornton Dill, 1996), so both status and

whatever power is attached to a given intersectional posi-

tion are relative to who else is in the situation and to the

nature of the situation.

Deaux (2000) points out that if status and power are con-

flated, we risk essentializing the link between gender and

power. To take an example from our own collaborative

research in progress, it appears that participants rate angry

targets differently by gender/racial ethnicity and also by con-

text. Anger is an emotion which expresses a sense of violated

entitlement and its aim is to restore order (not necessarily

achieved). It may be that higher status individuals are

believed to have a greater sense of entitlement about more

things, meaning their angry responses are more likely to be

expected or tolerated. On the other hand, it may be that per-

ceived power to effect change is only loosely related to per-

ceived status, and anger takes a different meaning if

expressed under conditions in which there is little power to

change the situation compared to others in which there is

more power. So we need to understand whether perceived

anger for different groups is due to status implied by

496 Psychology of Women Quarterly 35(3)

intersectional position, beliefs about the group’s capacity to

experience violated entitlement in the situation, differences

in willingness to assert their entitlement, or beliefs about the

efficacy of asserting it.

A Concluding Thought

Our collaboration on this introduction to the special section

reminded both of us about why we are passionate about our

research and committed to studying the psychology of gender.

We came to this collaboration from two very different points

in our career. For Stephanie, reviewing this history was a remin-

der of how far the field has moved forward from its complicated

mid-20 th

century beginnings as a female-pathologizing,

heterosexist province of psychodynamic personality theory.

For Elaine, it was a reminder of how much she has bene-

fitted from the feminist movement generally and within

psychology. The most exciting point for both of us comes

in looking forward to the opportunities that our collaboration

promises now and into the future.

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Matthew Zawadzki, Jessica Cundiff, and

Jean Lamont for comments on a preliminary version of this article.

Note

1. Although we are telling the story from a historical perspective,

we rely primarily on the current convention of using gender to

refer broadly to psychological, social, and cultural representation

of biological sex categories. Given space limitations, we are able

to cite only a fraction of the many influential and representative

publications pertinent to our account. We also include reference

to some sociological work that has had a marked effect on the

development of feminist psychology.

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