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Women in Academe:
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
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Appendix A: A Brief History of Women Faculty in Psychology
Understanding the opportunities and obstacles for women in psychology requires an appreciation for how the larger context shapes the contexts and careers of individuals. At the end of the 19th Century, a time when psychology was a newly emerging science, pervasive gender stereotypes shaped educational and employment opportunities for women. Known as the "cult of true womanhood" (Welter, 1966), a conception of femininity as pious, pure, domestic, and submissive was used to justify a societal division of labor congruent with gender stereotypes. As historian Margaret Rossiter (1982, 1995) observed, women in psychology, like all women in science of the time, were caught between two conflicting classes of stereotypes. First were the stereotypes of women that "linked and limited them to soft, delicate, emotional, noncompetitive, and nurturing kinds of feelings and behavior" (Rossiter, 1982, p. xv). Second, there were the stereotypes of scientists as "tough, rigorous, rational, impersonal, masculine, competitive, and unemotional" (Rossiter, 1982, p. xv). Women in psychology had a special relationship to gender bias and stereotypes, however, as the mantle of scientific psychology was used to justify discrimination against them.
As psychological science emerged, psychological theories of female personality and intellect incorporated the myths of gender and race of the time, giving the force of "science" to them. In 1910, pioneering psychologist Helen Thompson Woolley succinctly described the situation with regard to psychology's views of women:
There is perhaps no field aspiring to be scientific where flagrant personal bias, logic martyred in the cause of supporting a prejudice, unfounded assertions, and even sentimental rot and drivel, have run riot to such an extent as here. (Woolley, 1910, p. 340)
It was a time when leaders such as G. Stanley Hall, the founder of the American Psychological Association, warned that "mental women" competing with men "in the world" would cause "race suicide" as maternal urges became neglected (Shields, 1975). The fourth president of APA, James McKeen Cattell, also warned that higher education would endanger women's ability to perform her motherhood role:
Girls are injured more than boys by school life; they take it more seriously, and at certain times and at a certain age are far more subject to harm. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that to the average cost of each girl's education through high school must be added one unborn child. (Cattell, 1909, p. 91)
And then, of course, there is Sigmund Freud, whose descriptions of female personality would almost be amusing in today's light were it not for the terrible harm they have done to women. His phallocentric explanation of psychological development reinforced a societal view of women as inferior to and envious of men and jealous of other women. His construction of reports of sexual abuse by their fathers as female fantasies is one of the great outrages in psychology's history.
Psychologists were not the only scientists affected by the myths of time. Charles Darwin, arguably one of the most influential thinkers of the time, used evolution to justify women's subordinate status:
With women the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in men; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization. The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can women. (Darwin, 1967, pp. 873-874)
As more women entered the field, however, some used their scientific knowledge and skills to challenge gender myths supported by "scientific psychology." From the field's inception, women psychologists have been leaders in using psychological knowledge and skills to challenge the use of psychology to support a sexist status quo (O'Connell & Russo, 1980, 1988, 1990; Shields, 1975). Thus the contributions of feminist researchers to psychology become an important piece of the picture of women's status and roles in academe.
Sometimes the stereotypes worked to advance opportunities for women in "gender appropriate" domains. Beliefs in women's moral superiority were used to justify women's participation in a wide variety of social reform movement encompassing issues of child labor, prison reform, pure drinking water, free libraries, public sewers, ending prostitution, historic preservation, and peace (Hymowitz & Weissman, 1978). Even equal political rights and better conditions of employment were justified as a means for women to reform society. Women's rights were especially linked to child welfare (Sears, 1975). The confluence of professionalism, progressive education, and child welfare movements engendered a belief in a "professional approach to child care" that was used to argue for women's higher education. As Margaret Rossiter (1982) described:
The rapid development of secondary and then higher education...came only as the result of a shrewd political and intellectual compromise with the prevailing antifeminism; women might be educated, critics acquiesced, but only if it was for motherhood, their basic role in American society. (p. 313)
Women's colleges flourished, providing one of the few places where it was considered appropriate for women to work in all areas of science. Psychological clinics, child guidance centers, and child welfare institutes emerged, providing places for women psychologists to work in keeping with societal conceptions of women's roles (Russo, 1983, 1988).
As higher education expanded, women began to trickle into all fields of science but were particularly likely to go into fields perceived as congruent with gender stereotypes of the time: botany, sociology, economics, applied chemistry in home economics, and psychology (Rossiter, 1982). Colleges of education and of home economics provided "womanly" alternatives to psychology departments and homes for the newly emerging fields of counseling and school psychology and child development.
Given limited opportunities for employment in traditional psychology departments and widespread stereotyping that produced gender segregation of psychology's subfields, women became leaders and innovators in newly emerging areas of psychology seen at the time as congruent with women's abilities, including mental development and individual differences, educational psychology, child psychology, and animal psychology (Heidbreder, 1933).
As more women earned bachelor's and master's degrees in the sciences, men became concerned that the presence of women would lower their "prestige"—a new addition to the concept of masculinity of the time (Rossiter, 1982, p. 314). They erected a variety of barriers to restrict women to "women's work" and exclude them from academe, including the requirement of a doctoral degree for employment in the nation's universities. Indicators of prestige, such as "Fellow status" in professional associations and various scientific prizes were developed and then differentially awarded by men to men. These indicators could then be used to exclude women from other activities, including academic employment, based on "merit."
One of the lessons to be learned from studying women's history in psychology is the remarkable resilience and flexibility of women who both made the best of their limited options as well as created new ones. Unwelcome in academe, women in psychology (MAs and PhDs) found employment elsewhere, more in keeping with societal concepts of appropriate roles for women. By 1940, women were 30% of psychologists but held 51% of positions in guidance centers, clinics, schools, educational systems, hospitals, and custodial centers. By 1944 the figure was 60% although the proportion of women in the field had remained stable.
Meanwhile, 26% of positions in colleges
and universities were held by women (Bryan & Boring, 1946). In the subsequent
decades of the 1950s and 1960s (hallmarked by The
Feminine Mystique, Friedan,
1963), little changed. In 1973, women were one out of every five psychology
faculty members, a proportion lower than that found in 1944. It was not until
the rise of the women's movement in the 1970s, which grounded its arguments
in the importance of the individual, the equality of men and women, and the
rejection of gender stereotyping, that the proportions of women began to increase
in all of the sciences, including psychology (National Science Foundation, 1982).
Race and ethnicity have erected additional barriers to the full participation
of all women psychologists. The curricula in the Black colleges established
after the Civil War focused on Black communities' urgent needs, and psychology
in those schools focused on applications and became affiliated with education
departments. From 1920 to 1950 only 32 doctorates were earned by Black psychologists,
eight of them by women (four EdDs and four PhDs). In 1933 Inez Prosser made
history by being the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in psychology—an
EdD from the University of Cincinnati. In 1934, Ruth Howard (Beckham) became
the first Black woman to earn a PhD in psychology (Guthrie, 1976). Unfortunately
for academe, these women did not pursue their careers in academic institutions.
Information about ethnic minority women is scarce, and little is known about
the history of American Indian, Asian American, and Hispanic American women
psychologists, inside or outside of academe. It was not until 1962 that Martha
Bernal became the first known Mexican American woman to earn a PhD in psychology.
She went on to pursue an academic career and became a leader in the newly emerging
field of ethnic psychology (Bernal, 1988). The stories of pioneering ethnic
foremothers are still being written today as ethnic women advance in their careers
and make inroads into positions previously dominated by White males (see O'Connell
& Russo, 1983, 1988, 1990, for autobiographies and biographies of some of
these pioneers).
In 1970 APA established a Task Force on the Status of Women in 1970 (leading
to a continuing Committee on Women in Psychology [CWP] in 1973), which provided
a power base for women psychologists to work for change within the discipline
(see APA WPO, 1996, for a history of the committee's accomplishments). One of
the first efforts of CWP leaders was a successful petition drive to establish
a Division of the Psychology of Women (Division 35). Established in 1973, that
division provides a power base where feminist psychologists challenge myths
and stereotypes and go beyond a reactive stance to generating new theories,
methods, and techniques for understanding the development of women and men over
the life cycle and in diverse contexts (Russo & duMont, 1997). Ethnic minority
women were active leaders in these activities. They have provided powerful critiques
of psychology in general and feminist psychology in particular and have been
a source of creative energy and insightful vision for the emerging field of
the psychology of women (Landrine, 1997).
Because divisions elect members of APA's Council of Representatives (APA's
policy-making body), formation of Division 35 enabled women to organize a Women's
Caucus of Council, providing a power base for women's issues at APA's highest
levels. Today Division 35, the CWP, the Women's Programs Office, the Women's
Caucus of Council, and a host of committees and sections on women in other divisions
and state associations provide a network of power centers for women's issues
within the discipline. One measure of the power and success of the movement
is found in the composition of doctorate recipients in 1996: With women receiving
66.7% of all doctorates (including educational and school psychology), psychology
had the highest proportion of women of any field—science and nonscience—and
one of every seven doctorates earned by a woman was in a field of psychology
(NRC, 1998). After nearly a century, women's participation in psychology is
no longer an issue, and inroads have been made on gender segregation and salary
equity issues. It is now time to focus on compensation more broadly and to develop
a more sophisticated vision of issues related to power, status, and equity for
women psychologists in academe.
It is important to remember, however, that the status of women psychologists
waxes and wanes with the status of women in society, and advances should never
be taken for granted. Each generation must confront new challenges while protecting
its gains. Inequities persist, and lessons that are not passed down must be
painfully relearned. We pay a price for equity, and that price is vigilance.
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