Beyond Caring: The De-Moralization of Gender

Carol Gilligan heard a ‘distinct moral language’ in the voices of women who were subjects in her studies of moral reasoning. Though herself a developmental psychologist, Gilligan has put her mark on contemporary feminist moral philosophy by daring to claim the competence of this voice and the worth of its message. Her book, In a Different Voice, which one theorist has aptly described as a best-seller, explored the concern with care and relationships which Gilligan discerned in the moral reasoning of women and contrasted it with the orientation toward justice and rights which she found to typify the moral reasoning of men.

Gender and Age as Determinants of Job Satisfaction in the Accounting Profession: Evidence from Poland

One of the aspects of sustainable social and economic development is providing the public with the opportunity to conduct economic activity. This requires the proper development of information systems, identification of the determinants of performance, and development of the accounting profession. The aim of our study was to assess the sense of job satisfaction and prestige of the accounting profession in Poland, as seen by accountants themselves, depending on factors such as gender, age, and others. The background for the research was a country located in Central and Eastern Europe, which had just been through a political and economic transition. The study used questionnaire surveys and was based on nonparametric statistical methods: Chi-square, U Mann–Whitney, and the Kruskal–Wallis test. Herein, we provided evidence that strong feminization of the profession can be observed in Poland, and that women’s financial satisfaction with their profession was lower than that of men, in small companies as well as in companies without any foreign equity investment. We confirmed that age is more important than gender in differentiating perceived job satisfaction. The findings indicated that the assessment of the accounting profession should be considered when creating legislative solutions for sustainable social and economic development.

Gender, War, and Peace

The relationships between gender and war are complex. Ways of thinking about gender and war influence the questions asked, the knowledge sought, and the meaning given to evidence. In psychological research, sex role theory is the standard explanation for findings of difference between women and men in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors related to war. Feminist inquiry suggests several viable alternatives to sex role theory: feminist psychoanalysis, feminist moral theory, and social constructionism. This article examines these four epistemological positions and their potential claims about women's and men's psychological and moral responses to war, peace, and the nuclear threat. Each theory is examined for its utility and limits. We argue that a social constructionist orientation provides a particularly useful way of thinking about and researching both the intersections of gender and war and possible solutions to the human problems posed by war and the nuclear threat.

The Mismeasure of Woman

Psychology, like society at large, continues to be baffled by the persistent belief that men and women differ in important psychological ways, in spite of countless studies that fail to demonstrate such differences or that capture them for only a brief moment. New approaches avoid the polarization of `male' and female' traits, emphasizing how and why these qualities change over the life span, across cultures and throughout history. To understand where the differences are, we must look to narrative, power, and the conditions of our lives.

Relationships among Social Support, Diabetes Outcomes, and Morale for Older Men and Women

The present study examined (a) whether a diabetes-specific measure of social support is more highly related to diabetes outcomes than is a general measure of social support, (b) if the relationship between social support and diabetes outcomes is different for men and women, and (c) if self-care behavior and metabolic control influences morale among older adults with diabetes. Study participants were 191 community-dwelling volunteers (81 men, 110 women) over the age of 60 with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. For men, social support specific to one's regimen affected metabolic control indirectly by increasing self-care behavior. For women, neither diabetes-specific nor general support was related to self-care behavior nor was self-care behavior related to metabolic control. For women, only high levels of overall support were associated with higher levels of morale. For men, higher levels of morale were found for those who were married and perceived high levels of available support, and for those who were in better metabolic control. These latter findings suggest that reciprocal relationships between psychosocial variables and health outcomes should be considered.

Twenty Years of Feminist Counseling and Therapy

This article summarizes the history and current status of feminist counseling and psychotherapy. It describes the formation and development of feminist therapy during the 1970s, compares early commitments with aspects of change and maturation during the second decade, and reviews areas of agreement and disagreement during the 1980s and early 1990s. Initial feminist efforts resulted in the creation of an overarching philosophical framework for feminist psychotherapy. The second decade was marked by rapid expansion and the application of feminist therapy to diverse populations and problems as well as the integration of feminist philosophy with mainstream psychotherapeutic systems. Feminist therapists developed more complex models of personality, diagnosis, and ethical behavior and engaged in the examination and revision of early commitments. This review draws on the literatures of both social work and psychology and discusses the contribution of counseling psychologists to feminist therapy. It also addresses theoretical issues, research, training needs, and the role of advocacy and activism in feminist therapy.

Regarding Gender: Essentialism, Constructionism, and Feminist Psychology

This article attempts to clarify two alternative understandings of gender—the essentialist and the constructionist—and to discuss the implications of each for feminist psychology. Essentialist construals of gender, represented by recent “cultural feminist” positions, are critiqued for the theoretical, empirical, and political concerns they raise. A constructionist position is offered as ameliorative, and lingering questions raised by this analysis are discussed.

From ethics of care to psychology of care: reconnecting ethics of care to contemporary moral psychology

Moral psychology once regarded ethics of care as a promising theory. However, there is evidence to suggest that nowadays moral psychology completely ignores ethics of care's various insights. Moreover, ethics of care's core concepts - compassion, dependence, and the importance of early relations to moral development- are no longer considered to be relevant to the development of new theories in the field. In this paper, I will firstly discuss some of the reasons which, over recent years, have contributed to the marginalization of the role of ethics of care in moral psychology. Next, I will show that ethics of care's most promising idea centered on the care given to an infant and the importance of that care to the development of moral thinking. In this context, I will be describing the implications of John Bowlby's attachment theories, infant research, findings in moral psychology and neuroscience. I will argue that ethics of care needs to be radically re-thought and replaced by a psychology of care, an attachment approach to moral judgment, which would establish the centrality of the caregiver's role in moral development. The philosophical implications of this approach to the understanding of the "rationalists" and "intuitionists" debate about the true nature of moral judgment is also discussed.

The Type A belief system: relationships to hostility, social support, and life stress

Certain core beliefs may underlie the Type A behavior pattern, predisposing individuals to health problems and impaired interpersonal relationships. Previous studies have revealed that the Type A Cognitive Questionnaire (TACQ), a self-report measure reflecting these beliefs, is indeed related to emotional distress. The current study assessed the TACQ's relationship to aspects of the interpersonal environment, including perceived social support and stressful events. It also investigated the TACQ's relationship to subtypes of hostility (ie, cynicism and paranoid alienation). Subjects were 111 college undergraduate volunteers. As hypothesized, the TACQ was significantly related to poor quality of social support and to greater perceived life stress. The TACQ appeared more strongly related to cynicism than to paranoid alienation. Findings were generally more pronounced for males. The discussion suggests that Type A beliefs may predispose individuals to health problems through impaired interactions with their interpersonal environment.

Do women and men speak in different voices? A comparative study of self-evolvement

A comparative study of women's and men's levels of self evolvement was conducted based on Kegan's Constructive-Developmental Theory. The samples for the study were drawn from groups of American women and men in military service in Europe and their dependents, as well as civilians employed by the American military. The participants level of self evolvement was determined by Kegan's Subject-Object Interview. The results indicated that there were no gender differences in levels of self evolvement. Hence, the orientation toward individuation and increased autonomy, which is stereotypically masculine, and the orientation toward attachment and dependence, which is stereotypically feminine, are not necessarily based on innate male or female characteristics. The tendency towards separateness or inclusion may be related more to individual differences and other factors such as the social and cultural environment.

Measuring nurses' moral judgments

Studies of the moral reasoning of nurses yield inconsistent findings. Using Cronbach and Meehl's interpretive framework, the author demonstrates the lack of construct validity for Kohlberg's theory of moral development and related measures of moral reasoning. Gilligan's relational theory of moral orientations is proposed as an alternative theory worth testing in nurse samples.