PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMEN AND EQUALITIES
SECTION ANNUAL CONFERENCE 20217 - 9 JULY 2021, VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
Chris Griffin
Christine Griffin is Professor Emerita of Social Psychology at the University of Bath, UK, having retired from academia in 2017. She has a long-standing interest in young people’s experiences, especially how young women negotiate the contradictory terrain of femininity as shaped by gender, class, race and sexuality. Her recent research explored the relationship between identity and consumer culture, including a study on marketing alcohol to young people via social media in the UK and Aotearoa New Zealand. Christine was a founding member of the editorial group that launched the journal ‘Feminism and Psychology’ in 1991, and she organized a POWS/Women and Psychology conference at the University of Birmingham, UK in the early 1990s. She has been a leading advocate of qualitative approaches to research in social psychology, and has published widely in and beyond psychology, including two books: ‘Typical Girls?’ (1985) and ‘Representations of Youth’ (1993).
Letter to my younger self: Reflections on surviving as a feminist in academic psychology.
With a title inspired by a regular feature in the UK magazine ‘The Big Issue’, I draw on some of my own and others’ work to present insights from over 45 years surviving as a feminist within and outside of academic psychology. I stress the value of thinking historically; of adopting a critical feminist perspective; thinking beyond the boundaries of psychology, beyond academic disciplines, and beyond academia; and in particular, of thinking beyond gender. It is also vital to find and cherish supportive colleagues, and to fight for energising spaces such as POWES. Using examples of contexts in which ‘gender’ remains an unsettling and disputed term, I demonstrate the continuing opposition to critical feminist work within and beyond academic psychology. I end by exploring some of the challenges for feminists working in contemporary psychology as we attempt to understand, survive and resist the distinctive pressures of the global neoliberal regime in ‘postfeminist’ times.
POWES 2021
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