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Psychology of Women Section

Karen Ciclitira (Chair, Psychology of Women Section)

The Psychology of Women Section (POWS) was created in 1987, and this year we celebrated its twentieth anniversary at our annual POWS Conference in July, which was held at Cumberland Lodge, an elegant country house in the middle of Windsor Great Park. The conference explored the topics of ‘memory’, ‘history’, and ‘celebrating feminism(s)’.

The proceedings were opened by a keynote address from Professor Paula Nicolson, one of the founding members of POWS and its first Chair. A second keynote presentation was given by Jan Haaken, Professor of Psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist, documentary film-maker, and anti-violence activist. Jan has published extensively in the areas of psychoanalysis and feminism, the psychology of social movements, and trauma narratives, and was awarded a Visiting Fellow’s Award by the Society to address the conference. Her thought-provoking talk ‘Fighting male violence: anxieties, group defenses and the problem of reparation’ was based on interviews with women’s advocates in the battered women’s movement. The third keynote speaker was Dr Leonore Tiefer, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine, and a clinician in private practice in Manhattan, who spoke about Women’s sexual emancipation: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose? Leonore brilliantly dissected the way the pharmaceutical industry relies on distorted and oversimplified messages about sexuality to sell new drugs, and spoke about the campaign which she had started to combat this. Her inspiring address demonstrated the importance of grass-roots activism in the context of an increasingly powerful and high-tech global marketplace.

The Section has forged close links with feminists from different countries by inviting them to attend the annual Psychology of Women Conference and to give talks at UK universities. At this conference there were delegates from Canada, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Portugal, Scotland, Taiwan, USA and Zambia. The POWS Student Prize was awarded to Chi Nguyen, who came from Canada to deliver an impressive talk entitled ‘Finding a home in the public sphere, challenging the social representations of politics’. Chi described a case study at McGill University’s women’s in-house programme which aims to promote women’s participation in politics by giving students an opportunity to shadow female political leaders in Canada’s national Parliament. The conference closed with a characteristically vigorous keynote address from Lynne Segal, Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at Birkbeck College, London University. In her talk entitled ‘Identities, who needs them? Perils of self-narration’ she discussed the issue of identities in relation to her own political memoirs of the last forty years.

POWS conferences always include a varied social schedule, which this year included a disco with a 1980s theme to mark the anniversary, drinks in the gardens, and a professional blues singer. The Section also aims to take an active role in the Society, and committee members attend various Society meetings to ensure our involvement in the Society’s decisions and activities. POWS will be represented at an invited symposium entitled ‘Feminisms in the Academy’ at the Socity's Annual Conference in Dublin in April 2008; four papers will explicitly engage with some of the public debates on psychology and feminism as well as addressing empirical research in this area.

In July 2008 Professor Erica Burman will be taking over as Chair of the Section. Following the great success of this year’s event, POWS will be returning to Cumberland Lodge for next year’s conference (16-18 July 2008), which will focus on the themes of ‘Rights’ and ‘Change’. The keynote speakers for the conference will be Professor Nicola Gavey (University of Auckland), Professor Ros Gill (Open University); Professor Sue Wilkinson (Loughborough University), and Dr Nimisha Patel (Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture and University of East London).