An Introduction to

The Psychology of Women

Sergio A. Silverio
April 2015 – Università degli Studi di Padova
Content: An Introduction to The
Psychology of Women
• 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…
 Terminology & Background in
Women’s Ψ
• Terminology in Women’s Psychology
explained using feminist theory; and social
research as a basis for new definitions.

• A Brief History of Women looking at the

‘Waves of Feminism’ and how the focus of
feminists has changed.

• Women Today and where feminism is heading:

Controversies and possible future solutions and
developments .
Terminology in Women’s Psychology

• 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 (II)

• 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.
A Brief History of Women
First Wave Feminism…
19th and Early 20th Century
- Liberation movement across the
Western World.
- Suffragist parties globally
fought for the Universal Right-to-
Vote.
- An ‘Age of Enlightenment’ for
politico-social affairs.
- Saw the formation of the
International Council of Women
(ICW).
?
Second Wave Feminism…
1960s through 1980s
Third Wave Feminism…
The Millennium ± 10 Years
- Continued emancipation across
the Eastern World, as a reflection
of the European stronghold.
- Abolition of gender-role
experiences.
- Health-related freedom in
workplace; reproductive and - Reclaiming the terminology
marital situations.
suppressing women.
- Focus on sexuality and saw - Social class and educative
Women challenge their status as:
equality, bridging the gender-gap.
“The Second Sex”.
Women Today
• “Man Hating”? • Regulated Prostitution?
“Fourth Wave Feminism”
• Single Motherhood? • Anti-Feminism?

• A Place for Pornography? • Emasculation of Men?

• The Role of Transgenderism? • Lipstick Lesbianism?

• Feminist Sex Wars? • A Platform for LGBTQ?

Has Feminism now lost its way?… Are the waters just too muddied?
Women Today (II)
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…

 Why Study Women?
• Women have undergone huge socio-industrial
change in the Western World over the last
century.

• No longer is a Woman’s place solely in the

home, looking after domestic affairs and
children.

• The workplace is experiencing record numbers

of women recruited to higher managerial
positions.
Socio-Industrial Changes

• It is widely agreed women have indeed fulfilled more occupations

since the mid 20th 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 (II)

• 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)
Women and Patriarchy
• Traditionally, running the home and the domestic economy, was a task
men were happy for their wives to undertake. (Williams & Chen, 2013)

• Women who enter non-traditional job roles are seen to adopt a

masculine gender identity. (Wright & Holttum, 2012)

• Men can experience emasculation or may feel threatened, when they

are non-working partners or if they are working for women – a
phenomenon known as “melancholic masculinity”. (Petrou, 2012, p.568)
Breaking the Glass Ceiling
• “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)
 What do we Study in Women’s Ψ?
• 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.
Women’s Physical Health

• Women experience gender specific health conditions men would never be

exposed to.

• Femininity is intrinsically linked to bodily features so disease effecting these

parts of the body, such as breast cancer can alter how people look at these women
and can disturb self-perception of femininity.

• Women as the child-bearing gender can also suffer fertility issues, with the most
extreme being a hysterectomy and this can warp the femininity ideal.
Women’s Mental Health

• 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 Social 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 (II)

• Prostitution and illegal sex-work is far more likely to be assumed by women and
these situations of threat, must be documented to maintain a knowledge of
women in high-risk occupational circumstances.

• The WHO claim 16% to 50% of all women will suffer violence just due to their
gender with at least 20% of women being victims of rape or attempted rape over
their lifespan.
Counter Femino-Centric Roles

• 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.
The Gender Gap

• 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.
 How do we Conduct Ψ of Women
Research?
• Qualitatively analyse the life narratives of
Women.

• Rigorously test aspects of their personality,

cognitive ability, perception and memory.

• Track cohort changes or adaptations in

women’s gender-role and feminine identity
over time.
Life Narratives of a Woman

• Human beings document rich qualitative narratives around key points of their
lives, which abruptly drop off at the event itself, and then pick up again later.

• This is noted at cohabitation, marriage, divorce, diagnosis with chronic illness,

spousal loss and in women also at the point of conception and birthing.

• Analysing common themes or conversely idiosyncratic differences can help to

build a picture of the life experiences people have and for women, how they
identify with changing status and body.
Aspects of a Woman

• Women are known to score very differently on cognitive abilities and personality
trait scores than men.

• By repeatedly testing not only can we track changes in cohorts of women who
have different opportunities presented to them over time, but we can also
compare changes in individuals as and when they are effected by life events.

• Femininity is likely to change over time as both the social demands and
biological mechanisms effecting women are altered with age.
Gender-Polarity .vs. Gender-Plurality (Silverio, 2015)

• I introduced this direct contrast in concluding a debate on a loss of feminine

identity caused by the feminist struggle for gender equality.

• Gender-Polarity would be the traditional dyadic perception of gender, almost a

spectral account with women at one end and men at the other.

• Gender-Plurality is the practice of people adopting more than one gender, or

aspects of the whole gender spectrum in accordance with the situation or social
scenario one finds them self in or with the company one is keeping.
 What is the Scope of my Research?
• Being part of a mental and behavioural health
sciences Psychology research groups has given
me access to major life event narratives in
participants.

• Having a thesis project in evolutionary

psychology has enabled me to capture the
complexities of women’s decision making at
important life events.

• My primary interest is in profiling women for

feminine identity, drawing on historic literature
in order to carry out relevant research, what I
have called: “Female Psychology”.
Research I have Assisted In
Widow(er)s:
• Focus coding transcripts noticing differences in lived experiences of widows and
widowers who have been bereaved early compared to those bereaved at a normative
age.

• Collecting my own interview data to compare with the original sample and also address
gender and cross-cultural differences in those bereaved.

First Time Mothers:

• Analyses of longitudinal interviews which examined the impact of pregnancy-specific
anxiety on infant feeding across the transition from pregnancy to parenthood

• Confirmatory coding of interview transcripts to develop a grounded theory model of the

impact of anxiety on infant feeding outcomes.
Research I have Carried Out

Literature Review:
Silverio, S. A. (2015). On breaking the glass ceiling: Evidence for a loss of feminine identity caused by the
feminist struggle for gender equality. Manuscript submitted for publication.

• Undertaken a review of feminist theory and femininity studies, both historic and
current, culminating in a dissertation looking at femininity loss.

• Initially looked at the ‘Glass Ceiling’ phenomenon, but developed into noticing
femininity changes.

• Sparked a major interest in the peaks and troughs of femininity of women in their
industrio-social settings.
 SPOUSAL LOSS
The Future: Profiling a Women & Female Ψ
ILLNESS

Traditional Life Course:

• Narratives can be collected at each stage DIVORCE
• Personality testing can be done at each level
• Femininity changes can be tracked at each point CAREER

FIRST JOB

FIRST CHILD

• My particular interests lie in femininity

MARRIAGE
changes across women in education and the
early stages of their career.
COHABITATION
• Life narratives and personality testing can
give us a huge insight to the challenges to
EDUCATION femininity women may face.
 Literature of Interest
• ‘The Second Sex’ – Simone de Beauvoir

• ‘Women and Gender’ – Mary Crawford & Rhoda Unger

• ‘Feminist Psychology’ – Aarti Dua

• ‘Sexes and Genealogies’ – Luce Irigaray

• ‘The Creation of Patriarchy’ – Gerda Lerner

• ‘Duels and Duets’ – John L. Locke

• ‘Sexual Bargaining’ – John Scanzoni

 References
Broadbent, J., & Kirkham, L. (2008). Glass ceilings, glass cliffs or new worlds?: Revisiting gender and accounting. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability
Journal, 21, 465-473.
Castaño, C., Martían, J., Vázquez, S., & Martíanez, J. L. (2010). Female executives and the glass ceiling in Spain. International Labour Review, 149, 343-360.
Dawes, H. (2011). The Catholic Church and the woman question: Catholic feminism in Italy in the early 1900s. Catholic Historical Review, 97, 484-526.
Nogueira, M. C. (2009). Women in positions of power in Portugal: Contradictory positions and discourses. Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, 30, 70-88.
Petrou, M. (2012). Rural immigration, family farm modernisation and reactivation of traditional women's farming tasks in Greece: Masculinities and femininities
reconsidered. South European Society and Politics, 17, 553-571.
Scanzoni, J. (1982). Sexual bargaining: Power politics in the American marriage (2nd ed.). Chicago, United States of America: The University of Chicago Press.
Silverio, S. A. (2015). On breaking the glass ceiling: Evidence for a loss of feminine identity caused by the feminist struggle for gender equality. Manuscript
submitted for publication.
Schwegman, M. (2008). Amazons in Italy; Josephine Butler and the transformation of Italian female militancy. Women's History Review, 17, 173-178.
Williams, C. L. (2013). The glass escalator, revisited: Gender inequality in neoliberal times, SWS feminist lecturer. Gender and Society, 27, 609-629.
Williams, M. J., & Chen, S. (2014). When “mom’s the boss”: Control over domestic decision making reduces women’s interest in workplace power. Group
Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17, 436-452.
Wright, A. B., & Holttum, S. (2012). Gender identity, research self-efficacy and research intention in trainee clinical psychologists in the UK. Clinical Psychology
and Psychotherapy, 19, 46-56.
 Sergio A. Silverio
School of Psychology, University of Liverpool
S.A.Silverio@student.liverpool.ac.uk

Supervisors:
Dr. Laura K. Soulsby & Dr. Minna T. Lyons
School of Psychology, University of Liverpool