A bath-mitzvah feast

We are in a red room in a restaurant which has as its decor the Middle Ages. We are seated at a U-shaped table, and we are here to help a young girl celebrate her passage into womanhood. This is no religious ceremony, but a simple spiritual event. No priest, no rabbi is present, only women. All of us are anxious, anticipating what is to come. The girl's mother says a few words about a vision she had had of an inhibition. In it, she said, she saw a group of women seated in a circle around a fire. The drums urged the participants to dance. Amid the stamping of feet around the fire, a young girl comes into the circle and is welcomed by the older women of the tribe. Thus the girl becomes a woman in the community.

Then the young daughter stands up and begins to speak shyly of her nature spirit. She tells us of how she has sought for evidence of God in churches and thus far has only found some contact with Him in nature, alone in a field or on a hilltop.

After that the mother invited the guests to share in helping her daughter “become a woman in the tribe.” Here is how two of the women shared the event.—G.F.     

Sisters of the Heart Along the Way: The Power of the Female Mentoring Relationship

Women's mentoring relationships with other women can have powerful effects on professional development and enrich the lives of both mentor and protégée. Women psychology students and early career psychologists are tasked with integrating their personal and professional identities and overcoming gender-related barriers to professional growth and career success. Mentors provide assistance negotiating these and other challenges to the junior professional's development. The author shares her experience as a woman student and early career psychologist in the context of her relationship with her woman mentor. She discusses her reconciliation of stereotyped beliefs about being a woman and a professional psychologist; processes significantly influenced by powerful characteristics of her mentoring relationship such as supportive encouragement, modeling, transparency, and spiritual connectedness. The author then explores the link between the relational qualities in the mentoring relationship and an enhanced overall approach to clinical work with patients. Last, the benefits of women's intimate relationships are discussed, followed by references that explore benefits and challenges, and models and strategies for women mentoring women. The author concludes that as a sister of the heart relationship, the mentoring bond between women can be a healing and empowering attachment.     

The impact of informant gender on children’s endorsement of scientific and non-scientific information

By roughly 6 years of age, children acquire the stereotype that men are more competent than women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), potentially leading to greater trust in scientific information provided by men. This study tested whether 3- to 8-year-old children differentially endorsed conflicting information about science and toys presented by male and female informants depicted as a ‘man’ and ‘woman’ (Exp1) or ‘scientists’ (Exp2). Children were expected to endorse toy testimony from gender-matched informants; thus, the key question concerned endorsement of science testimony. In Exp1 (N = 149), boys and girls showed a same-gender informant preference for toy testimony; however, girls endorsed the male informant's testimony more for science than for toys – but only when tested by a male experimenter. In Exp2 (N = 264), boys and girls showed a same-gender preference, irrespective of content. Findings suggest that STEM-related gender stereotypes might lead girls to trust scientific information presented by men over women in certain contexts.     

Romantic Love,Altruism, and Self-Respect: An Analysis of Simone De Beauvoir

I examine Beauvoir's moral assessment of Romantic Love in The Second Sex. I first set out Beauvoir's central philosophical assumptions concerning the nature and situations of women, setting the framework for her analysis of the intersubjective dynamic which constitutes the phenomenology of romantic loving. In this process four double-bind paradoxes are generated which can lead, ultimately, to servility in the woman who loves. In a separate analysis, I ask whether it is wrong for a woman to aspire to and/or choose this form of servitude. I distinguish two kinds of considerations: (1) those having to do with the intrinsic moral nature of the commitment or decision, and (2) those based on considerations of harm: first, to the woman who loves; second, to the loved Other; third to the nature of the relationship; and fourth, to society in general.     

IMMANENCE AND ABJECTION IN SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

In this paper, I focus on the term ‘immanence’ in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and show how it relates to her historical account of sexual oppression. I argue that Beauvoir's use of Hegel's master?slave dialectic and of Claude Lévi‐Strauss's reflection on the prohibition of incest lead her to claim that in all societies “woman” is constructed as “absolutely other.” I show that there is an ambiguous logic of abjection at work in Beauvoir's account that explains why men are the only examples of transcendence in history, whereas women lack it. Finally, I discuss the way in which the relation between immanence and abjection helps to explain the intellectual relation between Georges Bataille and Beauvoir.     

The Gender‐Neutral Feminism of Hannah Arendt

Though many have recently attempted either to locate Arendt within feminism or feminism within the great body of Arendt's work, these efforts have proven only modestly successful. Even a cursory examination of Arendt's work should suggest that these efforts would prove frustrating. None of her voluminous writings deal specifically with gender, though some of her work certainly deals with notable women. Her interest is not in gender as such, but in woman as assimilated Jew or woman as social and political revolutionary. In this paper, I argue that Arendt recognized that what frequently passes for a gender question is not essentially a matter of gender at all, but rather an idiosyncratic form of loneliness that typically affects, though is by no means limited to, women. In her work one finds the conceptual tools necessary to understand the “woman problem” rather than an explicit argument or a solution to it.     

Damaris Cudworth Masham: A Seventeenth Century Feminist Philosopher

The daughter of Ralph Cudworth, and friend of John Locke, Damaris Masham was also a philosopher in her own right. She published two, philosophical books, A Discourse Concerning the Love of God and Occasional Thoughts In Reference to a Virtuous and Christian Life. Her primary purpose was to refute John Norris’ Malebranchian doctrine that we ought to love only God because only God can give us pleasure, and his criticism of Locke. In addition, she argues for greater educational opportunities for women, and an end to the double standard in sexual morality. Recent feminist literature has suggested that women and men may take different ethical and epistemological stands based on differences between the ‘female experience’, and the ‘male experience’. While leaving aside questions pertaining to the accuracy of these suggestions, this paper discusses some aspects of Mash’ am's thought which might be considered representative of the ‘female experience.’     

Personality Traits and Friendship Formation in Adolescent Girls

Summary

The present experiment demonstrated that Ss led to believe that an external cause is responsible for their arousal at seeing a woman in pain will be less likely to help her than those attributing their arousal to sympathy for her. Ten men and 10 women were told that exposure to an aversive noise would produce symptoms of physiological arousal; another 10 men and 10 women were told that irrelevant symptoms might occur. Those expecting irrelevant symptoms from noise bombardment helped a woman with a hurt knee significantly more than those expecting the noise to cause symptoms typical of arousal; these results provided support for both Schachter's cognitive attribution theory of emotion and Aronfreed's empathy theory of altruism.     

Woman as Metaphor1

Women's activities and relations to men are persistent metaphors for man's projects. I query the prominence of these and the lack of equivalent metaphors where men are the metaphoric vehicle for women and women's activities. Women's role as metaphor results from her otherness and her relational and mediational importance in men's lives. Otherness, mediation, and relation characterize the role of metaphor in language and thought. This congruence between metaphor and women makes the metaphor of woman especially potent in man's conceptual economy.     

Footsteps I would like to follow? How gender quotas affect the acceptance of women leaders as role models and inspirations for leadership

This research examines how the method of selecting women leaders affects other women's leadership interest. The results of three experiments (N = 1,015) indicated that only when women leaders were selected due to merit, not quota-based policies, did they boost female participants’ interest in a leadership position. These reactions were mediated by perceptions of the woman leader's deservingness of her position (Studies 1–3) and consequent acceptance as a role model (Studies 2 and 3). Accordingly, success information validating quota-based selected leaders’ competence provided a boost in leadership interest equal to that of merit-based selected leaders (Study 2). For male participants, quota but not merit-based selected women leaders lowered interest in leadership due to their pessimistic assessment of the probability of being selected (Study 1). These results suggest that a wise implementation of quota regulations includes validating women's competence so they are perceived as deserving of their leader roles and can thus serve as inspiring role models.     

Theme Articles: A Man Caught Between Bad Anthropology and Good Theology? Martin Luther's View of Women Generally and of Mary Specifically

Abstract : Martin Luther's view of women is as complex as his authorship is vast, encompassing a diversity of genres and purposes. Luther seems ambivalent toward women like the tradition before and after him. In his reformation enterprise he appears torn between his good theology and the bad anthropology that obscures his purportedly universal principles. This article uncovers some of the ambiguities in Luther's approaches to women, theoretically teaching men's authority over women yet simultaneously teaching the mutuality and equality of women and men; and practicing such mutuality and equality in his everyday life, not least in his marriage to Katharina von Bora. His good theology also comes to the fore in his Mariology, especially in his commentary to the Magnificat, in which Mary is not just a ‘woman’ but the human being par excellence in her truly faithful relation to God.     

Sabina Spielrein: out from the shadow of Jung and Freud

Abstract: Since the 1982 publication of Aldo Carotenuto's book, A Secret Symmetry: Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud, there has been renewed interest in the life and work of Sabina Spielrein. She was Jung's first psychoanalytic case at the Burghölzli Hospital in 1904, and was referred to several times in The Freud/Jung Letters. Spielrein recovered, enrolled in medical school, and went on to become a Freudian analyst. Her most famous paper, published in 1912, ‘Destruction as a cause of coming into being’, was referred to by Freud in 1920 in relation to his Death Instinct theory. In the few Freudian publications on this controversial theory since 1920, Spielrein's contribution is consistently omitted. Jung also neglected to refer to her ‘Destruction’ paper in his early 1912 version of ‘Symbols of transformation’, even though he had edited her paper and had promised to acknowledge her contribution. He did refer extensively to Spielrein's first paper, her medical thesis, ‘On the psychological content of a case of schizophrenia’, published in 1911, as yet unpublished in English. In her paper Spielrein sought to understand the psychotic delusions of Frau M, a patient at the Burghölzli, much in the style of Jung's ‘Psychology of dementia praecox’ (1907). The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent Spielrein's Frau M paper, and its companion ‘Destruction’ paper, make an original contribution to both Jung and Freud's emerging theories on the possible creative versus destructive outcomes of neurotic or psychotic introversion, culminating in Jung's concept of the ‘collective unconscious’ (1916) and Freud's concept of a ‘Death instinct’ (1920).     

Married Women's Name Styles and Interest in Continuing Education

This study uncovers a relationship between the way a married woman chooses to style her name and the extent to which she expresses interest in continuing education. The woman who chooses an independent name style is more likely to express interest in further training. She may differ in self-image from the woman who identifies herself by a dependent name style. Counselors who seek to help women through mid-career transitions may come to see name style as an important indicator of women's attitudes and one which may, in turn, affect others' attitudes toward them.     

George Eliot and the Authority of Preaching

Abstract

Preaching was for many centuries the domain of men, and the exclusion of women was justified on the grounds of their different nature and lack of authority. Victorian philosophical debates about the nature of women found literary counterparts in Victorian fiction. Eliot's novel Adam Bede presents a female preacher whose authority is demonstrably independent of her biological sex, despite the attitudes of her audiences. Her sermon's echoes of Mark's Gospel show how the literary contexts of both biblical and Victorian fiction may suggest that the authority of preaching in the material world comes from encounter with Christ and is entirely independent of gender.     

Recognition of Difference in the Author–Discussant Relation: Reply to Commentary

This author describes how poetry infuses her way of thinking, feeling, and writing and her way of working analytically. She introduces the concept of a nonanalytic third—the analyst's personal, intimate, and substantially abiding relationship to some body of experience unrelated to materia psychoanalytica. She posits that this nonanalytic third, the nature of which is unique to each analyst, constitutes a source of enrichment, texture, and dimensionality as well as personally compelling metaphors that the analyst may offer to the patient as other-than-me substance and a placeholder for cultivating the potential in the discourse of analytic potential space, in addition to serving as a facilitator and comfort for transition when the analyst must recognize and promote the necessary ending of an intimate analytic relationship.

Using Stephen Mitchell's notions of intersubjectivity and also using the analyst's and patient's separate role responsibilities in the creation of a context for the absence of conscious intentions, the author develops her concept of the nonanalytic third and the particular contribution of poetry to clinical process. These ideas are illustrated with a detailed case example of an unfolding analytic process that includes an e-mail exchange at the time when a shocking form of nonanalytic third appeared—September 11, 2001.     

Nonverbal Behaviors and Perceptions of Sexual Intentions: Effects of Sexual Connotativeness,Verbal response,and Rape Outcome

Through the exchange of nonverbal and verbal behaviors, a man and a woman on a date negotiate situated identities. However, a woman's nonverbal and verbal behaviors may reflect an identity discrepant from the one she intended to project, leading to miscommunication between men and women regarding the woman's desire for sexual activity. In Experiment 1, subjects read scenarios in which a woman, Mary, engaged in behaviors that were low, moderate, or high in the degree to which they connotated a desire for sex. In addition, they learned that Mary responded to her date's sexual advances either by saying "no," or by slapping him, or they received no information regarding Mary's verbal response. Subjects were also informed that Mary's date either did or did not force her to have sexual intercourse. Subjects perceived Mary more sexually as her behaviors increased in sexual connotation. In addition, they perceived that Mary desired sex more when no information about her verbal response was provided than when she resisted her date's sexual advances. Subjects also rated the woman more negatively when her nonverbal behaviors were incongruent with her responses to her dale's sexual advances. Contrary to previous research, little evidence of victim derogation was obtained. Results from Experiment 2 showed that men and women agreed in their perceptions of a woman whose behaviors connoted a high interest in sex, but that men perceived behaviors low in sexual connotation ore sexually than women. Implications of the data for understanding sexual miscommunication between men and women as well as reactions to rape victims are examined.     

Competent Enough,But Would You Vote for Her? Gender Stereotypes and Media Influences on Perceptions of Women Politicians

Though research has demonstrated that media coverage of men and women politicians differ, fewer studies have examined the dual influence of gender stereotypes and types of media coverage in influencing public perceptions of women politicians. Study 1 (N = 329) examined how pre‐existing attitudes toward women leaders and valence of media message impacted perceptions of a woman senator and evaluations of the media source. Study 2 (N = 246) explored how media focus on a woman politician's personality or ability impacted perceptions of her warmth/likability and competence. Results suggest the media has particular influence on judgments of women politicians' likability (the “competent but cold” effect), providing evidence that women politicians need to be vigilant in monitoring their media depictions.     

Toward a Woman-Centered Perspective of Careers: The Quilt Metaphor

The author proposes the artist and her quilt as a metaphor for the woman and her career. She suggests that quilts and quilting provide a woman-centered context to help counselors gain an understanding of women's lives and work.     

Striving for God's Attention: Gendered Spaces and Piety

This article looks at the inadequacy of space available to women in the two most holy sites for all Muslims: Masjid al‐Haram in Makkah and Masjid an‐Nabawi in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. I argue that religious discourse, shaped by geopolitical factors, has framed piety for women primarily in terms of modesty, such that a woman is often considered a good Muslim if she is visible only within her female community but invisible to the larger society. Furthermore, I argue that the allocation of meager space affects not only the perception of women's religious standing in society, but also women's own perception about their moral selves. The article claims that by being relegated to small sections within religious spaces, women's collective worship is evident neither to the community at large nor can it be fully experienced by individual women, thus placing obstacles in women's path to seek to closeness to God.