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Feminism: Womanism; valuing women. Feminism favors the social and legal changes that are necessary to achieve equality between women and men.

Feminist Psychology of Women: Recognition of the inequality of social and institutional power between women and men; making values of the researcher central to scientific study; studying women’s behavior and experiences within social contexts across the life cycle; advocating for change.

Introduction: The Need to Engender the Discipline of Psychology

In 1994 Florence L. Denmark called for “engendering psychology,” that is, for the field of psychology to cultivate a discipline that is sensitive to issues of gender and diversity; a discipline that makes women and women’s experiences central, not marginal to research and theories. Specifically, Denmark brought attention to the fact that psychology had ignored, trivialized, and distorted women’s (especially women in poverty, women of color, and lesbian women) realities and issues. Denmark...

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Denmark, F.L., Paludi, M.A. (2012). Women and Feminism, History of. In: Rieber, R.W. (eds) Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_199

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