Why no Women
I started this report on Mary Whiton Calkins. I was fascinated by the strides that she made in the fields of psychology, and how at every corner she was shot down because she was a woman. I went first to the library at PCC only to discover that I could find no reference to her work. So I backed up a step to William James whom Calkins was a student of. I found literally dozens of books on the man and his work, and countless references to his work. Out of the 26 books written about William James, I found only a two-paragraph reference to Mary Calkins. So then I proceeded to look up Josiah Royce whom Mary Calkins also studied under at Harvard, again I found plenty of books about the man and his work and not one single reference to Mary Calkins. This disturbed me. After searching 100 ways to Sunday on the library reference computer, I turned up nothing. I realized then that this report was about to take a very different turn. I decided then to get out the textbook and look !up every woman who was referenced in the book as contributing to the founding of psychology. I found reference to 11 different men and only reference to two w
Special and informal students also could not obtain entrance to PhD programs. Leta Hollingworth's 1928 textbook on adolescent development was used for 25 years. Lillian Martin did extensive research into psychophysics and perception. Margaret Washburn did research on motor theory and research on animal behavior. It was called "the book that launched the specialty of comparative psychology and influenced the development of behaviorism". There are some suggestions that the contributions made by women psychologists were insignificant or that women psychologists lacked the motivation to write and publish their work. This narrowed women psychologist's chances of contributing to experimental psychology. Frustrated I left PCC with a new idea for my report. There seems to be no explanation for the absence of women psychologist from psychology's history. Either women did not contribute very much to the founding of psychology, or that they just were not credited for their work. In positions such as these, women were denied recognition and publication. Many books downplay women's contributions by only referring to them as someone's student rather than their work in psychology. There is even evidence that some history books attribute women's ideas to men. In psychology's history, women in general were not valued, especially by certain Universities. Mary Calkins work in "paired associates learning" is credited to Adolph Jost.
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Acceptance Essays
