Understanding Women: Implications for Personality Theory and Research

This paper addresses the neglect of work on feminine psychology as a symptom of the far broader impoverishment of contemporary work in personality. Bakan's concepts of agency and communion are invoked toward understanding the constraints imposed by current research paradigms. Agentic (masculine) modes of inquiry involving manipulation, quantification, and control need to be complemented by the communal (feminine) research styles (naturalistic,...