Feminism & Psychology going forward

In 2014, 23 years after the launch of the journal, feminists face challenges that are different and yet similar to those of 1991. Consider that at the launch of F&P, the editor, Sue Wilkinson, indicated that the journal would not be distributed in South Africa and that individuals in South Africa could not submit manuscripts to the journal. The reason for this policy was the academic boycott against Apartheid South Africa, which had not yet been lifted. Today, a South African who works at a South African institution is the editor-in-chief. This dramatic reversal is symbolic, in some ways, of the possibility of positive change: oppressive systems can be challenged and overcome, as was the case when Apartheid was replaced by a democratic system based on a progressive founding constitution.

Another lesson of the South African situation, however, is the need for continued vigilance and struggle. Even when significant progressive change takes place, new oppressive practices and power relations emerge and old ones take new forms. For example, what Durrheim et al. (2011) term ‘race trouble’ continues in multiple and subtle forms in South Africa, and high levels of gender-based violence and oppression of sexual minorities persist despite a constitution that protects against sexual discrimination (Gqola, 2007; Steyn and Van Zyl, 2009).

Historical continuities, along with subtle changes and some dramatic discontinuities, characterise every region of the world. Patriarchal power relations persist, albeit in patchwork, fluctuating and variable forms. Therefore, the foundational aims of the journal remain as relevant as they were 23 years ago. We extend the aims of the journal, however, to address shifts in the practices that sustain relations of power as well as some key theoretical developments in feminist scholarship.

We embrace the founders’ vision for the journal and its distinctive niche in feminist publishing, and we acknowledge the extraordinary work of the past editors. We have expanded the journal’s Aims and Scope somewhat to underscore the global focus of the journal, to indicate that we intend to incorporate a full range of feminisms and psychologies in the journal, and to call attention to the ways in which feminisms have grown and shifted. The Aims and Scope now read as follows (with changes indicated in bold):

Feminism & Psychology provides an international forum for debate at the interface of feminisms and psychologies. The journal’s principal aim is to foster feminist theory and practice in – and beyond – psychology. We are interested in pieces that provide insights into gendered realities along multiple intersecting dimensions of difference, privilege and inequality. In addition to empirical work, we invite critical engagement with theories, methods of inquiry, concepts and disciplinary and professional practice.

Feminism & Psychology encourages submissions from scholars, researchers, activists and practitioners at all stages of their careers.

Note that the phrase ‘forum for debate at the interface of feminisms and psychologies’ continues to occupy pride of place among our aims. F&P has always been, and will continue to be, concerned with the conjunction between feminisms and psychologies in which ‘feminism[s] come first in our order of priority’ (Wilkinson, 1991: 6). Articles that appear in F&P have contributed to, and will continue to contribute to, feminist psychology or to feminist engagements with psychological/psychosocial issues. As Nicola Gavey and Virginia Braun (2008) said, this means ‘more than simply a focus on women, or gender, or sex difference’ (9).

The founding editorial group (1991) indicated that the journal would not be narrowly limited to ‘feminist psychology’ as a branch of psychology, but would instead seek to represent in broad scope the sometimes fractious, sometimes uneasy engagement of feminisms with psychologies. As Nicola Gavey and Virginia Braun (2008) asserted, feminist psychology encompasses ‘robust domains of inquiry with a tenacious hold on their critical, feminist bearings, and with flexible and permeable boundaries with other forms of critical scholarship and practice’ (6). We encourage reports on feminist work in other disciplines and multidisciplinary collaborations, as long as the implications for psychology are made clear.

Feminism & Psychology has always strived to be an international journal. The range of institutional affiliations of authors who have published in F&P between 2000 and 2012 demonstrates that F&P has indeed been international in scope¹ (see Table 1). We value the dialogues that have occurred across geographically dispersed sites, and the insights gathered from scholars working in a range of locations and national contexts. We seek ways to further these exchanges.

Table 1, however, also speaks loudly to the over-representation of the global North (that is, richer, more materially resourced countries). Reasons for this are not hard to fathom, given the correspondence between the wealth of a region and the resources it can devote to higher education and scholarly research. We editors all have experience of working in the contexts of both the global North and the global South. Whilst we are committed to our existing readers and contributors, we are also devising ways to increase the representation of feminist scholarship from locations in the global South. Our goal is not only to provide our readers with access to feminisms and psychologies around the world but also to encourage submissions from psychologists who draw on transnational and decolonial theories to examine the interrelations of diverse locations. Topics might include, for example, the experiences of diasporic communities and migrants, and the uncritical exportation of psychological knowledge from the USA and Europe to the rest of the world.

Feminists have rarely embraced a single theory or a uniform political goal or strategy. Even during the suffrage campaigns in the USA and the UK during the 19th and early 20th centuries, feminist leaders did not agree on exactly which women were entitled to vote, or on the most effective strategy for obtaining the vote. The feminist movements that emerged in those contexts in the latter half of the 20th century were even more diverse, encompassing, inter alia, socialist, liberal, separatist and Marxist ideologies, as well as strains of Black Feminist thought and lesbian separatism. As global flows of knowledge and people have increased, feminisms from diverse regions of the world – such as the social welfare states of the Nordic countries, Eastern Europe, the countries of the MENA region, South Asian countries, Latin America, Africa, and East Asia, along with the USA and the UK – have been brought into closer proximity.

As one might expect, every feminism bears the stamp of the material conditions, ideological presuppositions and socio-political structures of its place of origin. In the 21st century, feminist theorising in some parts of the world has intertwined with sexuality studies, queer theories and trans activism; in other parts of the world, issues such as access to education, sanitation, and health care, prohibition of child marriage, divorce reform, and equitable land and inheritance rights occupy centre stage.

The local specificity of feminisms has, unfortunately, not always been acknowledged by feminist scholars; the periodisation of the history of feminism into first, second and third ‘waves’ centres on events and personalities in Europe and the USA (Kurian, 2001). Indeed, even within Europe and the USA, that periodisation fails to recognise the history of other organised struggles, such as those of women of colour. These incomplete narratives attest to the dominance of Western, white and elite voices in feminist theorising and publishing.

Such de-contextualised and incomplete renditions of feminisms occlude complex, layered realities. As Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor (1999) have pointed out, ‘feminism’ is and always has been a contested term; the historical record is replete with kinds of feminists who would not readily find common ground. For example, what might we today make of imperial feminists who grounded their reform projects in British South Asia on imperialistic ideology and presumptions of white British moral and racial superiority, and promoted exaggerated images of enslaved and primitive Oriental women in need of ‘upliftment’ (Burton, 1994)?

Shifting to the contemporary scene, we see that gender scholars and activists enunciate a variety of ideological positions regarding feminism. For instance, some gender scholars in Africa have described feminism as ‘unAfrican’, and have argued that its theoretical and political development in Africa is (neo)colonialist (Dosekun, 2007). Some Muslim gender scholars have eschewed the term feminism and there have been contentious debates about the term Islamic feminism and its referents. For example, Asma Barlas (2008), a Pakistani scholar, has described how her work was labelled Islamic feminism by some gender scholars and how she has resisted this label. In the USA, some African-American scholars (such as Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and bell hooks) have embraced the term feminist, but others (e.g. Alice Walker) have regarded it as limiting or inappropriate. Outside the global North, feminisms have often taken on distinctive forms. For instance, feminisms in the colonised world have a history of deep engagement with national liberation struggles (Badran, 2008; Guy-Sheftall, 2003; Jayawardena, 1986, 2007). In Latin America, feminist activists have been explicitly engaged in battles for democratisation (Castro, 2001; Richard, 2001).

These varying renditions of the term feminism and feminist practice need to be read alongside renditions of feminism by anti-feminist polemicists. In non-Western contexts, anti-feminists have often portrayed feminism as a Western import, of interest only to a tiny handful of deracinated elite women and irrelevant to the bulk of the female population. In at least some cases, the portrayal of feminism as alien eradicates long-standing organised struggles by local women for equal treatment and justice (e.g. Marecek, 2000).

Such contestations notwithstanding, there has been and continues to be substantial engagement in many parts of the world with theoretical perspectives and practices that criticise social and gender inequalities and that aim to empower women. Margot Badran (2008), for example, has argued that feminism ‘was constructed and shaped concurrently by Muslims and others in the East … and by westerners in the late 19th and early 20th centuries’ (25). Similarly, Xue Fei Chen and Fanny Cheung (2011) have described a substantial and long trajectory of feminist organising in China. The literary critic Beverly Guy-Sheftall (2003) maintained that African women’s resistance to and activism against asymmetrical gender power relations pre-dates the colonisation of the African continent by Europeans.

Given the diversity of feminist theorising and activism and the complex positions scholars have regarding feminism, we chose as an editorial team to speak of feminisms in the plural. We are also aware, however, of the possible dangers of over-emphasising pluralism. We ask whether celebrating pluralism and multiplicity sidesteps critical debates and thereby blocks feminist theorising and political action. Is it possible to discern an underlying feminist project within the multiplicity of feminisms? Does feminism cease to have meaning as a concept or can constructs such as differentiated universalism (Lister, 2003) or chains of equivalence (Mohanty, 1999) enable us to retain a shared sense of purpose without ignoring epistemic, contextual and political differences? These are complex issues for which we do not pretend to have answers; we hope, however, that they will animate discussions in the journal.

Along with pluralising feminisms, we have opted to pluralise psychologies. There is a growing body of work that refers to indigenous psychologies as distinct from the theories and practices of the mainstream psychologies of the US and Western Europe. The indigenous psychology movement is not without difficulties in relation to how culture is viewed (Allwood, 2011) and in its usage of myths of origin (Macleod and Bhatia, 2008). Nevertheless, it speaks to the fact that all psychologies – even ones that aim to be ‘scientific’ – share the implicit presuppositions and moral outlooks of the socio-historical and cultural contexts within which they are embedded (Christopher et al., 2013).

Feminism & Psychology has a long history of doing psychology differently. In its critical approach to psychology, it has for many, ‘helped to sustain us in doing the kind of critical feminist work we have wanted to do – without feeling the need to abandon the discipline altogether for that to be possible’ (Gavey and Braun, 2008: 6). Since its founding, F&P aided readers to cultivate a lively curiosity – even skepticism – about psychology, as both discipline and profession. F&P readers have been asked to ponder taken-for-granted assumptions in psychology, whether about objectivity, value-free psychotherapy, or universal claims about generic human beings.

This editorial is not the appropriate space to rehearse critiques of what is referred to as mainstream psychology. However, to our minds, it is this history of reflexivity and debate that makes the journal distinctive. We intend to further it, while at the same time remaining cognisant of the potential dangers of homogenising mainstream psychology, and the requirement of nuanced engagement with the various strands of established psychology.

Throughout its history, Feminism & Psychology has published research that engages with people’s lives, experiences and dilemmas of living. Articles in F&P attend to the multiple identities that women and men hold, their positions in social structures, as well as their cultural surroundings. An emphasis on understanding ‘gendered realities along multiple dimensions of difference, privilege and inequality’ has always featured in the journal’s official statement of its Aims and Scope. We foreground this aim by adding the term intersecting in order to call attention to the need for what Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) has called ‘intersectionality thinking’.

In the eyes of some writers, intersectionality is the signal contribution that feminist scholarship has made to the analysis of gender (e.g. Shields 2008). As Kathy Davis (2008) has noted, it addresses what has long been of fundamental concern to feminists: differences among women. Key to its success, Davis noted, is its inherent ambiguity and openness. Is intersectionality a theory, a concept, an analytic lens or a method? Because it has remained largely unspecified, intersectionality ‘allows endless constellations of intersecting lines of difference to be explored’ (Davis, 2008: 77), while warning scholars against regarding gender as the primary axis of difference.

As Stephanie Shields (2008) acknowledged, knowing that intersectionality is important is not the same as knowing how to employ intersectional thinking in research. This may be especially true for psychologists. The additive model (e.g. Woman + Black + Lesbian), which readily maps on to the ‘analysis-of-variance’ thinking common to psychologists, has come under particularly heavy critique (e.g. Bowleg, 2008). For Avtar Brah and Ann Phoenix (2004: 76), ‘the concept emphasizes that different dimensions of social life cannot be separated out into discrete and pure strands’. This is readily seen in African feminists’ argument that a concentration on gender fails to take into account the multiplicity of the lives of women who live in Africa (Boris, 2007) – lives in which women have to contend daily with the effects of racism, ethnicism, (neo)colonialism, heteronormativity, and globalisation, often within contexts of poverty, child malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, continental militarisation, political instability, and poor infrastructural, health, educational and welfare supports.

MacKinnon (2013) has argued further that intersectional analyses do not pertain to ‘the subjectivity of … [individuals] in the psychological sense’ but rather to ‘the reality of their status’ (1028). In her view, it is not individuals’ identities that are problematic or problematised but the consequences of how they are socially identified and hence treated. As Crenshaw’s original formulation held, ‘intersectionality’ is not merely about intersecting identity categories, but more importantly, about the outcome of these intersections in terms of power relations.

Key debates about how intersectionality can be theorised and researched have been taking place over the last decade (Cho et al., 2013; Lutz et al., 2011; McCall, 2005; Taylor, 2011); we will encourage the extension and continuation of such conversations in Feminism & Psychology. Furthermore, we will ask all authors to acknowledge and foreground the locatedness of their research, even if a specifically intersectional analysis does not form part of their method.

As in the past, Feminism & Psychology will publish the following kinds of pieces: theoretical articles (up to 8000 words); empirical articles (up to 8000 words); methodological articles (up to 8000 words); brief research reports (up to 3000 words); observations and commentaries (between 500 and 2000 words); book reviews (up to 2000 words); book review essays (up to 8000 words); special issues and special features (including reappraisals of classic texts).

This wide range of formats, we believe, affords the greatest likelihood of achieving a fundamental purpose of the journal, viz. ‘dismantling social inequalities and transforming women’s lives’ (Wilkinson et al., 1991: 9). As Nicola Gavey and Virginia Braun (2008) observed, there is a ‘creative synergy between theory and research, on the one hand, and practice and social change on the other’ (7); that synergy can best be nurtured if the journal publishes work in a wide variety of formats.

F&P publishes empirical research based on qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. To merit publication, such research should be rigorous, ethical and theoretically informed, and the results should contribute to critical feminist psychology projects.

F&P also publishes work that engages critically with theories, methods and concepts, as well as critical analyses of disciplinary and professional practices. For all submissions, originality is an important criterion. Space in the journal is scarce and so a publishable piece must say something that has not been said before, offer a different perspective on material already in the public domain, or stimulate debate.

The Observations & Commentaries section provides an opportunity for scholars to reflect on a particular issue, comment on others’ work, or discuss theory or research processes. Brief research reports may present preliminary research findings or a specific aspect of a study that does not require a full-length article. Anyone is welcome to submit a brief research report, but we especially encourage students who have recently completed theses or dissertations to submit brief reports of their work.

The current context of teaching and practice is different from the one in which the journal was founded. E-learning and communication via the virtual world have become standard practice. With this in mind, F&P will compile virtual special editions that can be used for teaching and training. In addition, we are exploring ways to use social media to further the academic and activist projects of F&P.

As Nicola Gavey and Virginia Braun (2008) said, Feminism & Psychology has ‘welcome[d] pieces that identify new issues as well as pieces that revisit old issues; works that focus on social problems as well as works that focus on resistance and ignite hope’ (7). With this in mind, we explored the kind of work that has appeared in the journal in the past. Taking the last 13 years (2000 to 2012), we analysed the topics covered.²Table 2 shows the results of this analysis. (Note that a single article might be assigned to as many as three categorisations. The numbers in the table thus indicate the number of articles in the topic area, and the percentages refer to percent of categorisations, not articles. Appendix 1 contains a guide to the topic coding).

This analysis confirms that F&P has contributed significantly to theoretical and methodological knowledge production in feminisms and psychologies. Key problematics such as sexualities, identity and subjectivity, embodiment and the body, marriage, violence, mental health, health, issues regarding sexual minorities and parenting have received substantial attention. What is perhaps surprising is the relative inattention to reproduction, race and racism, workplace and organisational psychology, counselling and psychotherapy and substance use/abuse. While we welcome manuscripts on all topics relevant to the aims of the journal, we especially encourage manuscripts that address under-represented areas and issues that have received little attention from feminist psychologists. One example is unsafe abortion (Macleod, 2012). Another is the treatment experiences and lives of women with chronic and severe psychiatric disorders (Hornstein, 2013).

When the journal was founded, its readers were imagined as ‘feminists and those interested in the intellectual and political challenge of feminism’ (Wilkinson et al., 1991: 16). Nicola Gavey and Virginia Braun (2008), however, envisioned expanding Feminism & Psychology’s reach. As they declared, ‘if we are serious about social change, it is not sufficient to speak only to feminists and those who are already predisposed to our points of view’ (10). Beyond those who could be counted on to have a sympathetic reading, Gavey and Braun wanted the readership to encompass those who might disagree and those who were unfamiliar with the terrain that the journal covers. Knowing exactly who currently reads F&P is difficult. Like Gavey and Braun, we hope to reach many readers – those who are engaged feminists, those who are uncertain and those who may be skeptical.

What we do know is where the journal is being distributed. Table 3, supplied by SAGE, outlines the institutional and consortia subscriptions in various regions of the world. Based on these data, readership in North America and Europe, particularly the UK, appears to be well established, as is, to a lesser extent, readership in Australasia, Asia and South and Central America. Distribution to regions such as Africa is being developed through ‘developing world initiatives’. However, it is contingent upon the journal to speak to issues of concern to feminists and psychologists in these areas in order to develop a reading interest.

In conjunction with SAGE, we aim to expand our readership in multiple ways. We hope to engage with networks and journals that have similar aims. We hope that F&P’s past and present associate editors and the members of the editorial board can play a key role as ambassadors for the journal.

F&P was initially established independently of any formal institutional, association or society affiliation. This was intentional: the first editorial group believed it would ‘permit a broader and more creative exploration of a conjunction of feminism and psychology’ (Wilkinson et al., 1991: 6). Although F&P has always had close ties with the Psychology of Women Section of the British Psychological Society, its independence from this and any other formal organisation has enabled it to develop its international status. We will continue along these lines so as to develop psychological feminist theory and practice in a range of regions and across multiple intellectual boundaries.

F&P is supported by a broad community that comprises its editors, associate editors, editorial board members, reviewers, publishing staff, authors and readers. As we take on our first issue as new editors, we would like to thank those whose contributions have been crucial to the journal’s success.

First and foremost, our thanks go to Nicola Gavey and Virginia Braun for their excellent work as editors for these last years. Since they accepted the role in 2007, they have both sustained and developed the journal. As we reviewed the journal issues in preparation for this editorial, we were struck by how Nicola and Ginny have succeeded in ensuring that F&P plays, as they indicated in their editorial of 2008, ‘a leading role in stimulating new directions in the theories, methods, and practices of feminist psychology’ (6). Having worked with them both as authors submitting manuscripts to F&P and as associate or book review editors, we can attest to their generosity and dedication in providing detailed and constructive feedback to authors. This is the invisible labour of editing a journal that is fundamental to the quality of the final product. We know that they are both sad and excited to be handing over editorship. They will, of course, remain a part of the wider editorial board and active members of the aforementioned F&P community.

The quality of F&P rests heavily on the care and diligence of all those engaged in peer review and on their commitment to the journal and to nurturing the field. We have already seen numerous instances of constructive reviewing, generous sharing of knowledge, and creative insights in reviews done anonymously and, of course, without remuneration. We thank the reviewer community for its unstinting efforts. F&P additionally relies on its editorial board members to advise, promote and support the journal, as well as doing their fair share of reviewing. Associate editors, with a much more ‘hands-on’ role, are invaluable to the journal and the editors in maintaining a scholarly culture that aims to be both rigorous and nurturing.

We welcome the three new associate editors who have joined the team: Eva Magnusson from Umeå University in Sweden, Kopano Ratele from the University of South Africa and, as the new book review editor, Stephanie Taylor from the Open University in the UK. We also welcome new editorial assistants, Lindsay Kelland and Ryan du Toit who has already been hard at work smoothing out the transition. They well deserve our thanks.

Thanks to Lindsay Kelland for the labour that went into creating the tables featured in this editorial. Thanks also to Ryan du Toit who assisted with compiling the data.