2000 Carolyn Sherif Award Address: Some Life Lessons

This paper recounts some of the lessons I have learned from African Americans, including those I taught at Howard University, from research, from my struggle for pay equity, from my experiences with leadership organizing a community event, and from having cancer. I do not think any of these "lessons" are unique to me. I hope that sharing them will be helpful to others. Many of these lessons are about empowerment and acceptance.     

2001 Carolyn Sherif Award Address: The Presence of an Absence

Awarded for your spectacular contributions to feminist psychology, Division 35 presents to you the Carolyn Wood Sherif Award. A prodigious researcher and theorist, you break down the artificial distinctions between basic and applied work and between erudition and accessibility. In your scholarship you have raised to the forefront neglected variables such as ethnicity, social class, and disability. Your creativity, courage, warmth, and generosity of spirit make you an inspiration to scholars across a spectrum of disciplines, many of whom you have mentored, nurtured, and helped. Nor does your indefatigable advocacy stop at the campus gates. With humor, wisdom, and abundant determination, you have used the tools of our discipline to create community and to advance the cause of social justice. It is with gratitude that we honor you and your work, Michelle Fine.
While the power of her absence can't yet find words, this paper is dedicated, of course, to our friend, colleague, the fountain of energy, commitment, deep throated laughter, always searching for silver linings, the very missed Sue Zalk.     

Religious Persecution: And What To Do About It

Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and other religions can all be found in geographically diverse Indonesia. Adding to this layered society are many different ethnic groups, political groups, and socio–economic groups. The joining of all these factors led to different communities forming adats –religio–customary agreements. When talking about "religious persecution" in Indonesia, all of these factors must be taken into account. Even so, it would be extremely naive to think that religious belief is a peripheral motivation for violence. This article explores a method by which religious scholars, leaders, and communities can curtail religious persecution in Indonesia; the method includes: personal encounter; discussion of the scholarly agenda; a public engagement through dialogue that leads to commitment; and finally, the appeal of prayer and ritual.     

College-For-All: Do Students Understand What College Demands?

Social Psychology of Education - In an era when nearly all students are encouraged to attend college, how well do students' plans anticipate their likely attainments and what senior-year...     

2003 Division 35 Presidential Address: Feminist Leadership: Feminist Visions And Diverse Voices

Although the theories and models on feminism and leadership exist, there has been little study of the intersection of the two. The literature on feminist leadership is scant. Few have defined it and fewer still have researched it. Thus, Feminist Leadership was chosen for my presidential initiative. This initiative kicked off a dialogue about feminist leadership that is summarized in this article. The article is based on my presidential address presented at the 2003 Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in concluding my year as President of Division 35, the Society for the Psychology of Women. It identifies some challenges faced by women in leadership positions and by feminist leaders. It identifies the major issues that emerged during a web-based dialogue about feminist leadership. It discusses the intersection between theories of leadership and feminism. It ends with the lessons learned and implications for the future of feminist leadership.     

Support for Leader's Decisions in Conflict and Negotiation: Women Do Not Benefit From Relevant Expertise While Men Do

In the present research, we examined the role of leaders' domain‐specific expertise and gender as affecting individuals' evaluation of proposals related to intergroup conflict. Across three studies, conducted in two different conflict‐related contexts (Israeli‐Palestinian conflict and the refugee crisis in Europe), we showed that men and women do not equally benefit from domain‐specific expertise. Having high (compared to low) domain‐specific expertise positively affected participants' attitudes towards the proposal when its author was a man but not when she was a woman. We further demonstrate that specific characteristics of the proposal (i.e., security relevance) and of the participants (i.e., level of sexism) affect reactions to different negotiation proposals. Our findings suggest that even when women acquire relevant knowledge and experience, they do not benefit from them as much as men. One implication of these findings is that training and enhancing women's expertise may not be enough to eliminate gender bias.     

Long Working Hours and Well-being: What We Know,What We Do Not Know,and What We Need to Know

Despite a widespread belief in both the academic and public policy literatures that working long hours is deleterious to health and well-being, our critical review of this large and complex literature fails to support a robust direct causal effect of work hours on either physical or mental well-being outcomes. Large-scale epidemiological studies, many of which are prospective and include objective health outcome measures, support a statistically significant association between long work hours and coronary heart disease and depression, but the effect sizes are very small. Moreover, there is an absence of true longitudinal studies that assess the consistency of working long hours over time and its relationship to well-being. Our review suggests that the effects of working long hours are nuanced in that they may vary considerably for different working populations based on gender, age, working conditions, and other factors. Primary and meta-analytic studies suggest that such moderator effects are plausible, yet rigorous testing of these remains to be done. We conclude with suggestions for specific moderator effects that seem worth investigating in future research.     

Not Staying Home: The Experience of Uzbek Women Crisis Counselors and Therapists

This study explored the experiences of Uzbek women therapists and counselors working to end violence against women through their involvement in nongovernmental organizations. A content analysis was used, which elicited four themes: (a) participants' early interactions provided them with an awareness of gender injustices that led them into adult leadership roles with the support of family members; (b) motivation to work with nongovernmental organizations developed due to perceived barriers that impeded women's access to resources and personal freedoms; (c) participants struggled with how to create crisis centers without a grassroots foundation and with the limitations placed on them by the Uzbek government; and (d) the paradox of feminism: participants held views of Western feminism that both inspired and disturbed them, resulting in distance from feminist identities but general respect for its philosophies.     

On Not Seeing What You Do Not Want to See: Meloen, van der Linden and de Witte on Authoritarianism

Meloen, van der Linden, and de Witte (1996) were puzzled by their finding that their various scales of authoritarian attitudes all correlated at similar low levels with approval for a racist political party. They also reported that the "Directiveness" behavior inventory correlated not at all with political variables. If the validity characteristics of the various scales used are taken into account, however, the implications of their results are clear: The alleged scales of authoritarian attitudes were simply functioning as alternative scales of conservatism and people who preferred leftist political parties were just as likely to be authoritarian as those who preferred racist political parties.     

What I Look Like: College Women, Body Image, and Spirituality

Despite public acknowledgment of the importance of spiritual development, little has been written globally on female young adults’ personal views of their spiritual values and body image. This article briefly presents the findings of a pilot study that explored female college students’ reflections on body image and spirituality. Responses from participants showed that (1) many students are interested in faith and spiritual development; (2) body dissatisfaction affects those women who viewed themselves as spiritual (92%) as well as those who said they were free thinkers (49%). Nevertheless, religion and spiritual values seemed to confer some behavioral protection. Implications for educational programs that will address the spiritual dimension of learning are discussed.     

What I Felt Like Doing, but did Not Do When I Felt Hurt: An REBT-Based Investigation of Action Tendencies that are Not Acted On

In this questionnaire-based study, we investigated the action tendencies that 100 people reported having, but did not act on, in specific situations in which they felt hurt. An awareness of these types of unacted-on tendencies will help rational emotive behavior therapy therapists to be alert to the possible presence of hurt feelings and hurt-related motivational states that clients do not readily report experiencing in ABC analyses of hurt-related emotional episodes.