Feminist Psychology

Feminist psychology is a form of psychology centered on social structures and gender, developed as a critique of traditional psychological research conducted from a male perspective that treated men as the norm. Grounded in feminist values and principles, the field examines how individuals are shaped by the larger social and political context in which they live, particularly regarding gender identity and the effects of societal gender structures, including stereotypical gender roles and hierarchies, with the aim of understanding the individual within those wider social and political aspects of society and with particular emphasis on women's rights and the impact of gender on psychological wellbeing. The term is tied to the earlier work of Karen Horney, whose book Feminine Psychology, a collection of her articles from 1922 to 1937, addressed prevailing beliefs about women, relationships and the effects of society on women's psychology, though the field as it exists today gained its institutional momentum in the 1960s and 1970s as a response to a male-dominated discipline that had excluded women's experiences.