Unfamiliar Feminisms: Revisiting the National Council of Women Psychologists

Abstract

Second-generation women psychologists lived and worked between the two waves of organized feminist protest in the United States. This period is usually described as a time when feminist activity was suppressed or put on hold, and women psychologists from this period are often depicted as being collectively nonfeminist in orientation. In particular, historical accounts of the National Council of Women Psychologists (NCWP), formed in 1942, call the strength and value of members' feminist activism into question. Recent scholarship on interwave feminist activity in the United States has offered a new way of looking at the NCWP, and exploring feminist historiography and using archival data, we suggest that women of the NCWP used a variety of strategies appropriate to their zeitgeist to improve the standing of women in psychology. Some of these strategies do not map well onto post-1960s' definitions of feminist activism and so their effectiveness may not be easily recognized. We argue that the NCWP provided a platform for second-generation women psychologists to document gender-based disparities, debate strategies, and raise awareness of women's contributions to the field. In doing so, the NCWP prepared the ground for second-wave feminist organizing of the 1970s. We suggest that a close look at the struggles and strategies of the NCWP offers important lessons for contemporary feminist organizations in psychology.