A RESTlVE LEGACY The History of Feminist Work in Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In the last century feminist psychologists have contributed to refining and improving research in experimental psychology. While the accom-plishments are cause for celebration during the American Association of Psychology’s (APA) Centennial year, especially given the sexism that has accompanied scientific practices, we need to examine more care-fully the difficulties-past and present-that attend feminist efforts in the discipline. This brief article explores the strategies that feminist research-ers have used to eliminate androcentrism and sexism from experimental and, more recently, cognitive psychology. Such historical reassessment not only reveals the multiple and insightful means by which feminist psychologists have proceeded, but also indicates that feminist work must continue to focus on epistemological and theoretical problems as well as methodological ones. They have never been trained to work like men.... Women’s customs have changed so rapidly that work traditions have never had a chance to soak in [and]... not being trained from infancy to the tradition of inces-sant manipulative work, they drop out of the race as soon as they get com-fortable. (Watson, 192711978, p. 142) Thus went John B. Watson’s appraisal of modern women. Al though he was commenting o n a series o f articles wr i t t en by modern women of the 1920s, his remarks int imate some of the attitudes toward women under-taking w o r k in the f ie ld of psychology. Women were handicapped in t h i s experimental science which, if noth ing else, required “incessant manipula-t ive work.