Psychology of Women: Gender, Change, and Experiences, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Psychology

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An Introduction to

The Psychology of Women

Sergio A. Silverio

April 2015 – Università degli Studi di Padova

• Terminology and Background in Women’s Psychology.
  • Why study Women?
• What do we study in Women’s Psychology?
• How do we conduct Psychology of Women research?
• New Research… Content: An Introduction to The Psychology of Women

• Feminist Psychology: Exploration of women’s gender identity, within an industrio-social setting and other social hierarchies.
• Feminine Psychology: Research looking at the challenges and issues faced by feminine gender identity.
• Female Psychology: Studying the life narrative of women, exploring their health and adaptations to challenge over all life transitions.

Terminology in Women’s Psychology

• The Glass Ceiling: A term used in industry to describe the unseen barrier which prevents women from progressing to the upper rungs of the workplace structure.
• Patriarchy: A socio-industrial structure where males have ultimate power and optimal access to opportunities, dominating all aspects of societal and occupational systems.
• Matriarchy: Strictly a social organisation, in which generally the oldest female navigates the family through decisions and altercations.

Terminology in Women’s Psychology (II)

Women Today

• Single Motherhood?
  • Feminist Sex Wars?
    • Lipstick Lesbianism?
• A Platform for LGBTQ?
• Anti-Feminism?
• A Place for Pornography? (^) • Emasculation of Men?
• The Role of Transgenderism? “Fourth Wave Feminism”
• Regulated Prostitution?

Has Feminism now lost its way?… Are the waters just too muddied?

• “Man Hating”?

Good things coming from Feminism which is seemingly benefitting women:

• Rape Education
• Revisiting the ‘Glass Ceiling’
• Women’s Empowerment & Autonomy
• Policies for Motherhood Welfares in Work
• Understanding the Plasticity of Gender Identity
• Abolishing the Gender-Binary & Exploring Gender-Plurality Appropriate topics for a new area: ‘Female Psychology’ , to address…

Women Today (II)

• It is widely agreed women have indeed fulfilled more occupations

since the mid 20

th

Century.

• Major crisis events such as World War II, required women to replace

the workforce in the home countries, whilst men actively served abroad

• but this is a bargaining process. (Scanzoni, 1982)
• Italy also has a history of women being assumed to non-normative

roles – they were a major force in Garibaldi’s unification campaign.

(Schwegman, 2008)

Socio-Industrial Changes

• Even in today’s society, women tend to occupy ‘pink-professions’!
• Women are found to have less faith in their ability to fulfil higher-

managerial positions. (Castaño, Martían, Vázquez & Martíanez, 2010)

• Women in the workplace are stigmatised by other women.
• Some women do not value a working mother, and find it a non-ideal

train for women as role models. (Nogueira, 2009)

Socio-Industrial Changes (II)

• “A gender-based oppression leading to femininity and leadership being

viewed as largely incongruent phenomena”. (Silverio, 2015)

• Men in non-traditional and so, ‘pink-professions’ will often seek to

dominate, or be offered more responsibility/promotion opportunities

than women – known as the ‘glass escalator’. (Williams, 2013)

• Women in non-traditional and so, masculinised roles, will more likely

be demoted or lose their job after underperformance – known as the

‘glass cliff’. (Broadbent & Kirkham, 2008)

Breaking the Glass Ceiling

• Women-specific mental and physical health issues.
• Women in education, workplace environments, politics and power, including non-traditional women’s roles (i.e. those countered to the femino-centric women’s role).
• Gender changes in femininity and tracking the gender-gap fluctuations. What do we Study in Women’s Ψ?

• Women are far more prone to neurotic-type disorders (or neuroses) encompassing the spectrum of anxieties, phobic complaints and birthing-related disturbances which can resonate throughout the family of the afflicted.
• “Depression is not only the most common women's mental health problem but may be more persistent in women than men”. (The World Health Organisation [WHO], 2015)
• Anxiety is noted as twice as likely in females, than in males over the life course. (Mental Health Foundation, 2015 – adapted from The Office for National Statistics Psychiatric Morbidity Report, 2001)

Women’s Mental Health

• Women have long been stigmatised by cultures, religions and societies as the ‘weaker gender’ due to menstrual debilitation; pregnancy incapacitation and looked upon as objects of trade and to be owned by men.
• In the modern day, this translates largely to eating disorders in women who aim to fit in with the ‘feminine ideal’ so we see a greater prevalence of bulimia, anorexia and orthorexia nervosa in younger women and possibly the turn to binge eating and obesity in the ‘unsuccessful’.

Women’s Social Health

• The traditional view of women was that they were to be owned as a virgin , sold to be the possession of their husband as a wife and made ‘perfect’ again when a widow. Women definitely do not abide to these constraints now. (Dawes, 2011; Silverio, 2015)
• It is now not unusual to see women assuming conventionally masculine occupations such as engineering, physicist and construction positions – it is interesting to study the changes in femininity in these women.
• It is often assumed women as higher-level managers or other positions of authority abandon their femininity in favour of power and occupational respect.

Counter Femino-Centric Roles

• Women in power or gender-atypical occupations are not seen to become masculine, but rather abandon femininity, assuming androgyny.
• However, women in such roles are renowned for being able to fall back on their femininity when it is beneficial (securing a deal; assisting diplomacy etc.).
• Tracking the fluctuations in femininity is interesting to see how emancipation; education and industrial opportunities have affected women and if their ‘self’ has changed or simply been added to.

The Gender Gap