Gender Differences in the Integration Literature: A Content Analysis of JPT and JPC by Gender and Integration Type

Abstract

The current project asks the questions: Do “women's ways of knowing,” particularly women's ways of knowing God as evidenced in the literature on women's spirituality, imply that women have a unique contribution to make to the integration literature? Do feminine perspectives on integration provide a necessary ‘corrective’ to the largely theoretica literature? Based on a review of feminist contributions to theology, spirituality, philosophy, and psychology, it was hypothesized that female authors' contributions to the integration literature would emphasize practical, clinical, and experiential integration. A content analysis of the past ten years of integration articles in the Journal of Psychology and Theology and the Journal of Psychology and Christianity was conducted to examine the relationship between gender and type of integration. Significant variations in the frequency of male and female first authorship across types of integration were found. Gender differences in the frequency of interdisciplinary, intradisciplinary-clinical, and faith-praxis integration articles contributed most towards the variations: Female authors were more likely to author clinical and faith-praxis integration articles, and male authors were more likely to author interdisciplinary integration articles. Implications are explored regarding the benefits of including feminine thought as an integral partner in the task of integration and spiritual formation.