Stephanie Riger

What’s Wrong with Empowerment

Although it has stimulated useful and important research and theory in community psychology, the concept of empowerment is problematic. This article criticizes two assumptions and values underlying the concept of empowerment: (a) individualism, leading potentially to unmitigated competition and conflict among those who are empowered; and (b) a preference for traditionally masculine concepts of mastery, power, and control over traditionally feminine concerns of communion and cooperation. The challenge to community psychology is to develop a vision that incorporates both empowerment and community, despite the paradoxical nature of these two phenomena.

Gender Dilemmas in Sexual Harassment Policies and Procedures.

Many organizations have established policies and procedures to deal with sexual harassment, yet few complaints are reported. Some have suggested that the lack of complaints is due to the absence of a problem, or the timidity or fearfulness of victims. This article proposes that the reasons for the lack o fuse of sexual harassment grievance procedures lie not in the victims, but rather in the procedures themselves. Women perceive sexual harassment differently than men do, and their orientation to disputeresolution processes is likely to differ as well. The way that policies define harassment and the nature of dispute resolution procedures may better fit male than female perspectives. This gender bias is likely to discourage women from reporting complaints.

The Radiating Impact of Intimate Partner Violence

Many studies of violence against women focus on the impact of abuse on the victims emotional and physical well-being. Here the authors expand the conceptualization of the impact of violence to include other aspects of the victims life as well as the lives of those in her social world. Analyses of life narrative interviews with women 1 year after their stay in battered womens shelters indicates that violence affects not only women who are abused but also those who are not directly victimized yet who nonetheless suffer consequences of violence. The authors discuss the implications of this conceptualization of violence for both research and policy

Effectiveness of hotline, advocacy, counseling, and shelter services for victims of domestic violence: a statewide evaluation.

The authors report the results of an evaluation of services provided by 54 Illinois domestic violence agencies. In collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago evaluation team, domestic violence advocates identified services to be evaluated, specified desired outcomes of those services, and participated in developing measures of those outcomes in both English and Spanish. With in the limitations of the study, outcomes were positive in all four program areas: hotline, counseling, advocacy, and shelter. The authors then discuss implications for evaluation of domestic violence programs that maintain victim safety as a guiding principle.

The Impact of Past Sexual Experiences on Attributions of Responsibility for Rape

Two factors potentially affect observers’attributions of responsibility to a rape survivor: how closely they identify with the survivor and how much they adhere to rape myths. To assess the impact of these factors, 157 female college students categorized by their sexual assault history and by their acceptance of rape myths, evaluateda sexual assault scenario. It was hypothesized that previously victimized participants would attribute less blame, and that those participants who self-identify as rape survivors would view the assault as rape more often than other participants. Neither hypothesis was supported. As expected, those who scored higher on the Rape Myths Acceptance Scale(RMAS) blamed the victim more and were less likely to believe rape had occurred. Only one subscale of the RMAS, Adversarial Sexual Beliefs, was consistently associated with participants’evaluation of the scenario, suggesting that this dimension may be especially important to understanding an observer’s assessment of rape.

The meaning of community in community mental health

This article critically reviews the development of community mental health in both theory and practice and explores new directions and dilemmas for future policy and programs. First, we trace the dialectical development of the ideology of community mental health and the rediscovery of community. Second, we outline the two key transitions: (a) from professionals to natural helpers and (b) from catchment areas to natural networks. Third, we offer alternative conceptions of community from the sociological literature and suggest ways that these can benefit new program planning. We conclude with a series of policy questions that legitimate the expansion of community mental health beyond the parochial confines of the local community.

Welfare Reform, Domestic Violence, and Employment What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Know?

Welfare reforms enacted in 1996 require that recipients work to receive benefits. Advocates for battered women feared that abusive men would escalate violence in response to independence brought to women by employment. Yet research on employment, domestic violence, and welfare reform has yielded mixed findings. The authors review those findings and propose that a context-sensitive social-psychological perspective identifying relevant dimensions of culture and measuring partner’s employment may be more useful than a focus only on characteristics of women. Findings suggest that inclusion of generous work supportsin welfare legislation may help reducepoverty and domestic violence.

The impact of welfare reform on men's violence against women

Welfare reform is likely to have a profound effect on the lives of poor women who are being abused. This article proposes exchange theory and the feminist “backlash hypothesis” as frameworks with which to assess the impact of welfare reform on violence levels in abusive relationships. Exchange theory suggests that if a woman leaves welfare and obtains employment that increases her economic resources, violence against her will decrease. The backlash hypothesis makes a different prediction: Violence will increase as men attempt to compensate for womens enhanced status or independence. Both approaches are examined in light of current data. As demonstrated here, the incorporation into social policy analyses of feminist thinking about dominance and power will enrich our understanding of the impact of social policy changes on people.

Feminism and psychology: analysis of a half-century of research on women and gender.

Starting in the 1960s, feminists argued that the discipline of psychology had neglected the study of women and gender and misrepresented women in its research and theories. Feminists also posed many questions worthy of being addressed by psychological science. This call for research preceded the emergence of a new and influential body of research on gender and women that grew especially rapidly during the period of greatest feminist activism. The descriptions of this research presented in this article derive from searches of the journal articles cataloged by PsycINFO for 1960-2009. These explorations revealed (a) a concentration of studies in basic research areas investigating social behavior and individual dispositions and in many applied areas, (b) differing trajectories of research on prototypical topics, and (c) diverse theoretical orientations that authors have not typically labeled as feminist. The considerable dissemination of this research is evident in its dispersion beyond gender-specialty journals into a wide range of other journals, including psychologys core review and theory journals, as well as in its coverage in introductory psychology textbooks. In this formidable body of research, psychological science has reflected the profound changes in the status of women during the last half-century and addressed numerous questions that these changes have posed. Feminism served to catalyze this research area, which grew beyond the bounds of feminist psychology to incorporate a very large array of theories, methods, and topics.

Coping with urban crime: Women's use of precautionary behaviors

This investigation examines the impact of three sets of variables, neighborhood conditions, psychological factors, and life circumstances, on womens use of behaviors designed to protect themselves from criminal victimization. Participants in the study were 299 women living in Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. Two types of precautionary behaviors were identified: avoiding dangerous situations (e.g., by not going out alone at night) and managing risks in the face of possible danger (e.g., by asking repairmen for identification). The three sets of variables were better able to predict avoidance than risk-management behavior. Commonality analyses revealed that psychological factors uniquely accounted for the largest proportion of the variance in the use of both types of precautions. In multiple regression analyses, fear, perceived physical competence, race, and education were significant predictors of avoidance, while fear and perceptions of local social disorder had significant regression effects on risk-management. Implications of the results for research and social policies regarding the impact of crime on communities are discussed, and this area is suggested as a rich context for the exploration of styles of coping with environmental stressors.