WOMEN AND POWER Definition, Dualism, and Difference

This article reviews the discussions of power and of women and power in United States psychology. Although the field has had difficulty dealing with power, feminist psychology has focused attention on the topic and has advanced the discussion significantly. There are three problems in the literature: definition; person/society dualism; and the need to deal with race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and other social differences besides gender. This article describes components needed for a good definition, criticizes the reduction of power to two modes, and discusses issues involved in improving the analysis of social differences and moving towards resolving person/society dualism. Several nondualistic concepts and potentially useful directions are proposed.