Farm women/farm work

The lack of documentation of women's farm work makes it difficult to assess women's contributions to farm businesses. A survey of farm women in western Canada showed that while younger women were more likely to have a farm work role, they also saw more barriers to farm work than older women. Variations in women's farm work may be a result of cohort differences in socialization for farm work, of farm cycle, or of family cycle. Incorporation of off-farm and household work into the analysis of women's contributions to the farm business is suggested as a more comprehensive method of assessing their work involvement.This research was funded by The Research Council of Alberta Farming for the Future.     

A cognitive learning perspective on women becoming expert managers

Despite recent gains, women still face the glass ceiling—an invisible barrier that blocks their entry into top executive positions. Explanations for women's lack of success range from blaming men for discrimination to blaming women themselves. Rather than blaming the people in organizations, it is useful to analyze the task facing women managers. I argue that understanding the inherent difficulties in women's work can provide a new perspective on why women have difficulty in achieving top positions. Recent work in cognitive psychology is helping us learn more about the processes involved in reaching high levels of performance. Using these theories and concepts to analyze the task facing women managers, we can begin to develop new ways to help women develop higher levels of managerial skill.     

职业女性工作家庭冲突的压力源研究

本研究在已有研究的基础上 ,对浙江省杭州市职业女性进行了一次工作 -家庭冲突的调查研究。总结了现阶段职业女性工作 -家庭冲突的现状 ,探讨了角色压力源与工作 -家庭冲突的关系 ,分析了影响职业女性工作 -家庭冲突程度的因素。     

Career Stages in Australian Professional Women: A Test of Super's Model

This study empirically tested Super's career stage theory by examining whether differences in Australian professional women's attitudes toward work vary across the career life cycle. A number of career stage research criticisms relating to sample type, recycling issues, and career stage measurement were addressed. Hypotheses were tested via trend analyses providing support for the theoretical propositions in Super's career stage model. Results show that satisfaction with pay and job involvement were lowest in the exploration stage, women in the establishment stage were significantly more satisfied with pay and less willing to relocate for promotion compared to women in the exploration stage, while women in the maintenance stage were more committed to their profession and more involved in their careers than women in establishment and exploration stages. The research findings suggest that Super's career stage model is a useful framework for understanding women's career development.     

Predictors of Satisfaction Among College-Educated African American Women in Midlife

There has been little theorizing or empirical research on satisfaction among African American women at midlife. This study addresses this gap by examining predictors of satisfaction in 3 cohorts (N = 202) of midlife college-educated African American women. Specifically, 3 domains of satisfaction were examined: overall life satisfaction, personal satisfaction, and work satisfaction. Results revealed that the women were highly satisfied with their work situation, their personal life, and generally with how their life had turned out so far. Overall life satisfaction was predicted by the women's perceptions of personal control, role quality, household burden, and their cohort status. Work satisfaction was best predicted by the women's sense of personal control and role quality. Lastly, household burden and physical well-being emerged as significant predictors of personal satisfaction. Implications of the findings and recommendations for future research are offered.     

IDENTITIES IN HARMONY: GENDER–WORK IDENTITY INTEGRATION MODERATES FRAME SWITCHING IN COGNITIVE PROCESSING

Professional women's identity integration—the perceived compatibility between work and gender identities—plays a role in how task or relationship information is processed. Seventy female business school students were primed with either their professional or their gender identity. Business women with higher identity integration showed an assimilation effect to the primed cue. Specifically, they showed higher task orientation than relationship orientation in a recognition task when primed with their professional identity, but less so when primed with their gender identity. Business women with lower identity integration showed a contrast effect to the primed cue: Their recognition reflected a task-relationship orientation opposite to the primed cue. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding women's performance at work.     

Psychology and African-American women: Findings from applied research

The current applied research on African-American women is characterized by a limited focus on primarily poor and single mothers and comparative studies with white women. The resulting research ignores the diversity within African-American women generalizing from noncomparative or restrictive samples to all African-American women and provides narrowly focused and/or inappropriate research models in which to study the development of these women across the life span. This review focuses on some of this research as it relates to social context factors in African-American women's lives: social supports and parenting, work and self-esteem, gender role attitudes and marital life, and mental health. An examination of methodological problems and suggestions for future research is discussed.     

Glass maze in women's leadership

Psychological gender discrimination explanations have changed over the past thirty years, becoming more complex in order to obtain a better understanding of the social reality. At the present moment, one of the most interesting research areas is the one referring to the 'glass maze' phenomenon in women's management careers. The main purpose of this work is to reveal the theoretical evolution in an attempt to explain the leadership study from a gender perspective. The consecutive hypotheses, starting with the labour sexual division idea, are becoming more interactive in order to understand the current labour-social situation. Social psychology has underlined the role of beliefs, observed via gender stereotyped roles, prejudiced attitudes against women, sexist and neo-sexist ideology, or masculine, feminine and androgynous identity development. New psychological interpretations insist on the variability of the gender concept, where gender is sometimes observed through men and women's behaviours, and other times through those behaviour expectations. But gender is mainly observed though the power relations between men and women during social interactions in labour organizations.     

Between Subjugation and Survival: Women, Borderline Personality Disorder and High Security Mental Hospitals

Women in high security mental health care are frequently diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Such women commonly report histories of child abuse, in particular child sexual abuse, and the vast majority also self-harm. In this paper, we draw on social constructionist theory to develop a framework for understanding these women, the effects of abuse and the reasons they self-harm. We demonstrate how a social model of intervention provides a comprehensive framework for identifying and exploring relevant factors within therapy. We argue that diagnostic categorisation has limited utility in directing therapeutic work with this particular group of women, because it directs attention away from the social world to internal pathology. We demonstrate that it is with reference to women's past and current relationships that borderline behaviour can be understood to be meaningful and partially adaptive. We conclude that treatment is more usefully organised around and directed towards those factors, such as abuse and self-harm, that are implicated in women's ongoing relationship difficulties.     

JAPANESE PERCEPTIONS OF MOTHERHOOD

Differences in Japanese attitudes toward motherhood were investigated using Hare-Mustin and Broderick's (1979) Motherhood Inventory (MI), administered to 157 male and 85 female university students and 72 mothers. Factor analyses revealed distinctive profiles for each group. Male students believed that motherhood was appropriate and natural for women and were content to let women operate independently within this role. Mothers emphasized that women's greatest fulfillment was associated with mothering. Female university students recognized the importance of and the hard work involved in mothering, but were less likely to perceive it as the primary source of women's fulfillment. Comparisons of group means on MI items revealed that university women held the least conventional views. Further research is needed to determine whether their attitudes about female gender roles reflect a general trend within this cohort of women or transitory responses related to stage in the life cycle.     

WOMEN, WORK, AND FAMILY

This essay reviews and synthesizes Jessie Bernard's writings on women, work, and family. Bernard's conceptualization of "two worlds"—one of women and one of men—provides the organizing theme, from which three major issues are derived: (a) the dilemmas of caring, (b) the feminization of work, and (c) work and family roles over the life course. Examining her historical perspective on these issues, her view of the present, and her vision of the future, the article raises unanswered questions in Bernard's work and suggests implications for future research on women's work and family roles.     

Growing awareness of gender in urban policies

This article discusses issues from the Women in the City Conference held in October 1994 in Paris. The conference was organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Urban Affairs of the Territorial Development Service. An OECD report "Shaping Structural Change--The Role of Women" was published in 1991. This report argued that economies were not benefiting fully from women's contributions to economic growth and social development. Also, the "systemic nature of gender-based inequalities and the need for systemic solutions" was encouraged. The Secretary General urged OECD work groups to include the issue of the role of women. The conference was organized to this end. The conference demonstrated the progress made in women's international leadership and policy participation. However, the conference also indicated that the representation of women in urban decision making and planning groups was too low in member countries. Some urban changes involving urban women were a concern. 1) Women's participation in the labor force increased to 60%, and these women are required to provide the household budget. 2) Two parent households declined and single parent households, mostly women, increased. 3) Single person households increased and many were elderly and female. 4) OECD country populations were aging. These aforementioned trends place greater responsibilities on women. Urban policies impact on women's daily lives. Women are seeking policy changes related to women's transportation needs, access to affordable housing, improved house and community environments, security, more responsive services, economic development for women, and culture and leisure. Women's participation in public life can be improved through the expansion of child care facilities, legal changes, provision of gender-sensitive information, and new forms of urban governance that are more responsive and accessible to women.     

WOMEN'S PERSPECTIVES ON FEMINISM

This Q-methodological study identified and described women's multiple perspectives on feminism. Fifty Q-sort items reflecting various perspectives represented in feminist theory were developed. These items were rated by 59 women along a "most agree"–"most disagree" dimension Principal components analysis was used to identify groups of women who sorted the items in similar ways. Six distinct points of view were identified in the Q-sorts, five of which are discussed in detail. The five perspectives were interpreted and labeled based on the examination of the Q-sorts of the participants in each group. Follow-up interviews with selected participants also contributed to the understanding of these perspectives. The research demonstrates the multidimensional nature of the feminism construct. Future research on feminism should recognize the multiple ways of conceptualizing feminism in order to represent the construct as women experience it.     

The "CEO" of women's work lives: how Big Five Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Openness predict 50 years of work experiences in a changing sociocultural context

Few long-term longitudinal studies have examined how dimensions of personality are related to work lives, especially in women. We propose a life-course framework for studying work over time, from preparatory activities (in the 20s) to descending work involvement (after age 60), using 50 years of life data from the women in the Mills Longitudinal Study. We hypothesized differential work effects for Extraversion (work as pursuit of rewards), Openness (work as self-actualization), and Conscientiousness (work as duty) and measured these 3 traits as predictor variables when the women were still in college. In a prospective longitudinal design, we then studied how these traits predicted the women's subsequent work lives from young adulthood to age 70 and how these effects depended on the changing sociocultural context. Specifically, the young adulthood of the Mills women in the mid-1960s was rigidly gender typed and family oriented; neither work nor education variables at that time were predicted from earlier personality traits. However, as women's roles changed, later work variables became related to all 3 traits, as expected from current Big Five theory and research. For example, early personality traits predicted the timing of involvement in work, the kinds of jobs chosen, and the status and satisfaction achieved, as well as continued work participation and financial security in late adulthood. Early traits were also linked to specific cultural influences, such as the traditional feminine role, the women's movement, and graduate education for careers.     

PSYCHOLOGY RECONSTRUCTS THE FEMALE 1968–1988

Recent work on the psychology of gender is pluralistic, stemming from varied specialty areas within psychology, grounded in several intellectual frameworks, and reflecting a spectrum of feminist perspectives. This article is a critical appraisal of diverse approaches to the study of women and gender. It first describes prefeminist or "womanless" psychology, then analyzes four co-existing frameworks that have generated recent research. The four frameworks are: Exceptional Women , in which empirical research focuses on the correlates of high achievement for women, and women's history in the discipline is re-evaluated; Women as Problem (or Anomaly ), in which research emphasizes explanations for female "deficiencies" (e.g., fear of success); the Psychology of Gender , in which the focus of inquiry shifts from women to gender, conceived as a principle of social organization that structures relations between women and men; and a (currently relatively undeveloped) Transformation framework that reflexively challenges the values, assumptions, and normative practices of the discipline. Examples of research programs within each approach are described, and the strengths and limitations of each approach are critically examined.     

GENDER AND SERIOUS MENTAL ILLNESS: A Feminist Perspective

Perhaps in reaction to criticisms of "woman as problem" formulations, psychological literature has nearly ignored women with serious mental illnesses (SMI), although epidemiological research indicates that women are overrepresented in these diagnoses. Data are presented on characteristics, functioning, and services received for a sample of nearly 2,500 SMI clients. Statistical clustering of clients with similar profiles produced four out of six clusters with significant differences in proportions of female versus male clients represented. The results indicate that the extent to which SMI clients display gender-related symptoms and behaviors is a significant factor in clinician perceptions and in service utilization. However, results also show substantial overlap in gender composition of the clusters. Discussion centers on the quality of care and appropriateness of services for female clients. Future research is suggested, utilizing a feminist understanding of women's diversity and of sociopolitical factors related to mental health.     

Women and Paid Work

A productive workforce is a prime goal of the Decade of Behavior initiative. Thanks to the women's movement that started in the 1960s, the majority of adult women today are a part of that productive workforce, demonstrating their knowledge, skills and abilities, and earning a livelihood through paid employment. Nevertheless, real equal opportunity in paid work remains an elusive goal. In this paper, two major reviews of the literature on women and paid work written 20 years apart (Cleveland, Stockdale, & Murphy, 2000; Nieva & Gutek, 1981) serve to structure a discussion of what we know about women's experiences in paid work. Selective areas of research are reviewed under four kinds of topics: (1) topics that have disappeared over the past 20 years, (2) important topics that were not studied or could not be studied 20 years ago but are now (women as leaders), (3) previously neglected topics (stereotyping), and (4) rapidly emerging topics (mentoring, effects of preferential selection, sexual harassment). It is largely from feminist scholarship on women and paid work that we have been able to separate myth from reality through the accumulation of a sizable research-based literature. Unfortunately the body of research on women and paid work is still insufficiently integrated into the body of research on the psychology of work.     

Feminism and Women's Autonomy: the Challenge of Female Genital Cutting

Feminist studies of female genital cutting (FGC) provide ample evidence that many women exercise effective agency with respect to this practice, both as accommodators and as resisters. The influence of culture on autonomy is ambiguous: women who resist cultural mandates for FGC do not necessarily enjoy greater autonomy than do those women who accommodate the practice, yet it is clear that some social contexts are more conducive to autonomy than others. In this paper, I explore the implications for autonomy theory of these understandings of the relation between culture, FGC, and women's agency. I review the range of worldwide FGC practices – including "corrective" surgery for "ambiguous genitalia" in Western cultures as well as the various initiation rites observed in some African and Asian cultures – and the diverse cultural rationales for different forms of FGC. I argue that neither latitudinarian, value-neutral accounts of autonomy nor restrictive, value-saturated accounts adequately explain women's agentic position with respect to FGC. I then analyze a number of educational programs that have enhanced women's autonomy, especially by strengthening their introspection, empathy, and imagination. Such programs, which engage women's autonomy skills without exposing them to autonomy-disabling cultural alienation, promote autonomy-within-culture. This understanding of autonomy as socially situated, however, entails neither endorsement of FGC nor resignation to its persistence.     

THE INFLUENCE OF MOTHER-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIPS ON WOMEN'S SENSE OF SELF AND CURRENT ROLE CHOICES

This study investigates the relationship of women's current role choices, role satisfaction, and self-esteem to their perceptions of the earlier relationship with their mothers and to their perceptions of their mothers' role choices and role satisfaction. Sixty-seven married women with preschool children were interviewed and completed self-report inventories. Results indicated that the women's primary role decisions of career, non-career work, or homemaking did not parallel those of their mothers but was related to their mothers' messages to them. In addition, career women and women at home reported having more choice in their decisions than did non-career working women. Women's self-esteem and role satisfaction were significantly enhanced ( p <.05) when the relationship with the mother was perceived as loving and accepting, with low hostility and low psychological control. In contrast, women's self-esteem and role satisfaction were generally unrelated to the retrospective reports of the mothers' roles and role satisfaction.     

Justice and the inclusion of women in clinical studies: an argument for further reform

Our society's practice of inadequately representing women as subjects of clinical research is unjust, not only because it results in inequalities in the quality and availability of care that have a detrimental impact on women's health, but also because it is linked to women's oppression. Although recent policy changes help to resolve the problems, more must be done. Additional remedies for the injustices of our society's research practices are proposed.