Women and Gender: Transforming Psychology (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: TRANSFORMING PSYCHOLOGY, TRANSFORMING OURSELVES
Review: Reprinted from forthcoming issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly with the persmission of Cambridge University Press:

Into the midst of debates about whether Psychology of Women courses are superfluous in the presence of increasing (and often more politically palatable) Psychology of Gender courses, steps Yoder's (1999) Women and Gender: Transforming Psychology. The book's title aptly demonstrates the inextricable linkage between the concepts of women and gender. Yet, rather than being subsumed by the gender category, women are at the forefront of this scholarly rigorous, unabashedly feminist, and wonderfully engaging book.

The 12 chapter book is targeted to undergraduate students and focuses on a variety of topics routinely found in psychology of women texts (e.g., history of feminist psychology, sex differences, gender socialization and development, gender comparisons, sexism, relationships, work, physical and mental health; and violence against women). Yet, there is nothing routine about Yoder's handling of these topics. Favoring a bridge between personal experience and systematic research that she calls "triangulated" (p. 18), Yoder adroitly combines contemporary research on women and gender with a diverse array of women's experiences. In the chapter entitled, "Socialization Practices: Learning to Be Ourselves in a Gender Polarized World," for example, Yoder reviews some of the most recent research on gender differences in media forums such as children's storybooks, television and the marketing of toys, and discusses her own parental experiences and concerns.

To encourage readers to engage interactively with the text, Yoder has included several quizzes and mini-exercises at the beginning and end of chapters. I very much liked this innovation, and believe that this will prove ideal for personally engaging students in the study of women and gender. Best of all, rather than providing a series of research findings on a topic, each chapter is organized around clear and coherent themes. Among my favorite chapters was "Sexism: Sexist Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination" in which under the theme, sexist discrimination, Yoder presented current research on how physical discrimination affects White and African American women with physical disabilities. A theme in the chapter on "Women's Physical Health and Well-Being: Understudied, Mythologized, but Changing," focuses on the division of women's health into reproductive and "general" health categories. As she does throughout the text, Yoder asks provocative questions. In the case of the women's health division, Yoder muses whether the disproportionate focus on breast cancer research is because our society is obsessed with women's breasts or because the disease "is detected most frequently in a select subset of privileged women" (p. 247).

In addition to making a substantive scholarly contribution to feminist psychology, the book is immensely readable. Compared to other psychology of women or psychology of gender texts that my undergraduate students have pronounced, "too dry or too dense," Yoder's themes, presented research, analyses, and perspectives flow seamlessly. Much of this readability is due, no doubt, to Yoder's writing and editing process. In the preface, Yoder notes that the book was developed in conjunction with weekly critiques from 13 honors students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who reviewed and critiqued each chapter. Yoder recounts that the students said that they often read chapters in one sitting because the "story" flowed so well. I wholeheartedly concur with the students' findings.

Yet another strength of the book is its infusion of multicultural perspectives. Yoder does not subscribe to the notion of a generic woman, or man for that matter. Instead, research relevant to racial and ethnic minority women and men, lesbians, people with physical disabilities, the elderly, working class people, and other multicultural populations are skillfully (and refreshingly) interwoven with research and perspectives on the text's themes. Moreover, a selection of photos of people such as White women with prosthetic devices running a race; to an African American woman and man in graduation regalia; and an Asian American woman doing office work with her nearby infant similarly illustrate the importance of multicultural views.

I immensely enjoyed this book, and wholeheartedly recommend its inclusion in undergraduate Psychology of Women and Psychology of Gender courses. This notwithstanding, I would have liked to see Yoder's conceptualization of gender broadened to include transgendered people. Since the book also focuses on the larger category of gender, our understanding of the psychology of gender could surely be expanded with perspectives and contemporary research that transcends the women-men gender dichotomy. Indeed, both the chapter on "Biological Essentialism: Our Bodies, Ourselves?" and the chapter on "Socialization Practices: Learning to be Ourselves in a Gender-Polarized World' would have furthered Yoder's goal of transforming psychology with a focus on some of the research and complexities relevant to people who hormonally and surgically alter their sex, and those who transcend gender in cognition, behavior, and appearance. Moreover, although Yoder's emphasis on lesbians is quite good, the experiences of bisexual women are virtually absent from the text. Although the index lists a section on bisexual identity development, I did not find any research or information related to bisexual women on the referred pages.

Nonetheless, the theme of transformation is central to Yoder. In the first chapter, "Feminist Transformations of Psychology: There's No Turning Back" Yoder describes Freud's infamous case study of Dora to demonstrate " ... the role feminism has played ... in [irrevocably altering] the way we approach women and gender" (p. 2). The final chapter, "Making A Difference: Transforming Ourselves, Our Relationships and Our Society" further echoes the transformation theme, but now the focus is on individual transformation and social justice. Invoking Gloria Steinem's (1983) invitation to do "outrageous acts and everyday rebellions," Yoder provides students with numerous examples for making a difference on behalf of women. In a refreshingly unconventional twist, Yoder gives the last word to Chicana lesbian feminist poet, Cherrie Moraga (1983) through Moraga's poignant poem, "The Welder." The final stanza of Moraga's poem states: "I am the welder. I am taking the power into my own hands." Indeed, by the end of Women and Gender: Transforming Psychology, students should leave the classroom inspired not only by feminist psychology's transformation of our understanding of women and gender, but also of the power to transform the world beyond the classroom.