2015 Association for Women in Psychology Conference

Research indicates that less than two percent of K-12 educators are African American males (National Center for Education Statistic, 2010). In order to recruit African American men into teaching, the project, “Black Men Teaching” targets African American youth, especially from low-income neighborhoods, in hopes of inspiring them to become educators. This facilitated discussion is designed to bring together advocates of underserved, minority populations in hope of formulating new ideas to resolve this dilemma. The lack of Black men in education is problematic. One of the main reasons for the dismally low number of African-American male teachers is that African-American males hold negative views toward teaching as a career. Teaching is often viewed as a woman's profession and as a low-paying field (Smith, 2004). Black youth have had little exposure to positive role models in the educational setting. Without these role models, African American children lack the guidance needed to pursue a career in education. In addition, White children are disadvantaged. Stereotypes exists about Black men; Caucasian children would benefit from exposure to positive Black male role models in order to debunk these beliefs and create a society with less prejudice. Black youth from low-income communities are faced with the realities of oppression every day, causing them to make choices that may lead them to incarceration or even worse, death. By targeting these communities with an advocacy program such as “Black Men Teaching”, I believe we can help these children create promising futures. My goal for this facilitated discussion is to bring together professionals who are working in a similar area or have an interest in advocating for underserved, minority groups. I hope to create a space where we can discuss and develop new ways to recruit Black youth into education. In addition, this space can be used to discuss forms of oppression and barriers Black youth face, and ways to combat these problems.

Peer education is an approach to psychoeducational learning through which students learn from and interact with their peers rather than faculty or staff. Peer educators may solidify their own learning through facilitating workshops and presentations with their peers on topics related to health and mental health (Boud, Cohen, & Sampson, 2011). Additionally, Williams reported, “Learning done in the context of community creates rich opportunities for complex interactions with students different from one another” (Williams, 2011). Interactive learning “in the context of community” lends itself well to focusing a peer education program on the intersections of mental health and social and restorative justice. Although students involved in social and restorative justice based peer education programs have reported profound and transformative learning experiences in terms of insights about others as well as themselves, these programs are rare on college campuses (Voorhees & Petkas, 2011). The Multicultural Immersion Program (MIP) at UC-Davis is celebrating its 18th year as a peer education program sponsored by the Counseling Center that focuses on social and restorative justice work and the intersections of mental health and oppression. This structured discussion will feature past and current MIP peer educators along with their Counseling Center staff coordinators, who will discuss the evolution of their feminist, social and restorative justice work on campus. In the first part of this discussion facilitators will share their experiences in the MIP program, the development of their multicultural dialogue skills through their collaborations with community partners on campus, and the impact the program has had on them both personally and professionally. The facilitators will then engage the participants in discussion and in generating ideas for bringing peer-led social and restorative justice programming to campuses and organizations in which participants are involved.

Women’s Therapy Center (WTC) is a feminist psychodynamic social justice oriented training clinic. Our faculty wants to talk with people from other training agencies about creating more racial/ethnic diversity among faculty, supervisors and trainees. We have created a diverse training cohort, and hope to learn more about attracting faculty and supervisors. WTC was founded in 1978 as a place for experienced women therapists to train beginning therapists in work with female clients. Although WTC has always had small numbers of women of color affiliated with our training programs, our organization has historically been predominantly White. Our agency has served a diverse client population for many years. We have successfully turned a corner over the past six years, so that people of European descent are no longer the majority of people training with us. This was not an easy thing to achieve. There were many conversations and many mistakes. We made changes to our admissions criteria that expanded access to us, and we changed our curriculum to be more inclusive. We had many diversity trainings aimed at both students and faculty. We have stopped seeing people of color as the only carriers of culture, and begun to recognize the culture of Whiteness that our organization embodied. Having an all-volunteer faculty and supervisory staff added to our challenges for diversifying. In our early years, we were most interested in the way that sexism, within the gender binary, shaped women’s lives. We now include an understanding of the ways that all social location shapes our internal and external lives. Although we continue to be predominantly a women’s organization, our understanding of gender has expanded and we now serve and train transgender/genderqueer people as well as women. We hope our conversation can also include the complexity of this shift.

Many of the participants at AWP are committed to efforts to reduce prejudice and discrimination of all kinds. And many of us have been frustrated when those efforts seem to go nowhere, or to create huge psychological reactance, or even to blow up in our faces. Conversely, many of us have participated in diversity trainings that leave us underwhelmed or feeling ashamed but with no tools for moving forward. Frustrated by these sorts of experiences, we went back to the drawing board to try to figure out what approaches might be more productive. We were excited by the emerging research on implicit attitudes and how much that research helped to explain about what does and does not work when purple tackle challenging learning at implicit as well as at explicit levels. We have been developing and applying a model based on the implicit attitudes research. We have used the model in a number of contexts, including general diversity training, work with academically at-risk college students, individual and group therapy, trainings on oppression and privilege, teaching at different levels, and consultation and outreach. The model has shown great promise, and we have received uniformly positive evaluations from a large variety of participants. We would like to use a structured workshop to share this model with AWP participants and to find out what approaches and methods they have been finding helpful. We propose offering a brief introduction about the challenges of creating spaces in which participants can feel safe enough to work to undo prejudicial attitudes and behaviors. We want to introduce them to the approaches we have been developing and we want to hear what approaches they have been finding useful in whatever contexts they do their work.

To become culturally competent (APA, 2002), graduate psychology students must reflect on themselves and others in a cultural context. Toward this end, taking risks that involve authentic exploration of complex multicultural dynamics often invokes discomfort, fear, and, at times, conflict. In multicultural training, conflicts may involve intersections of multiple identities and dynamics around privilege, oppression, and power. Oftentimes unconscious biases, stereotypes, and internalized oppression are the undercurrents of these challenging dynamics. These classroom conflicts, ruptures, and microaggressions (Sue, 2010) may provide rich examples of the lived experiences of historical and systemic oppression - a microcosm of the larger society. Restorative practices can be used to address conflicts, ruptures and microaggressions that occur in the classroom. Restorative pedagogy helps to inform responses to difficult classroom situations through the teaching of the restorative mindset and values, as well as restorative modeling by the instructors (Hopkins, 2012). Restorative values involve a commitment to community, connection, transformation, and power-sharing (Gavrielides, 2014), which may represent a superordinate goal (Ridley, 2006) that helps students come together to address injustice, not solely from an individual interaction level but from a more interdependent and collective level. Additionally, conflict resolution and shame management within restorative models (Morrison & Ahmed, 2006) are critical to navigate challenging classroom situations. The presenters have many years of collective experience training, presenting, and publishing in multicultural psychology and have worked collaboratively to consider how best to interrupt classroom conflicts and microaggressions. The aim of this structured discussion is to bring educators together to discuss and explore the ways in which restorative practices can facilitate connection and community in the classroom even after ruptures, resistance, and microaggressions have taken place. Practical strategies for applications of restorative practices into curriculum design and group facilitation will be explored through the use of vignettes and structured questions. References American Psychological Association, Joint Task Force of APA Divisions 17 (Counseling Psychology) and 45 (The Society of the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues)(2002). Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change for Psychologists. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/policy/multicultural-guidelines.aspx Gavrielides, T. (2014). Bringing race relations into the restorative justice debate: An alternative and personalized vision of “the other.” Journal of Black Studies, 45, 216-246. Doi: 10.1177/0021934714526042. Hopkins, B. (2012, Annual). Restorative justice as social justice. Nottingham Law Journal, 21, 121+. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA327955043&v=2.1&u=nu_main&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=bf02a1c794152edc60972aa4cca07215 Morrison, B. & Ahmed, E. (2006). Restorative justice and civil society: Emerging practice, theory, and evidence. Journal of Social Issues, 62(2), 209-215. Ridley, C.R. (2006). Surmounting resistance to multicultural training. Presented at the Convention of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, LA. Sue, D. W. (2010). Microaggressions, marginality, and oppression: An introduction. D.W. Sue (Ed.), Microaggressions and marginality: Manifestation, dynamics, and impact. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

There are intersections of identities that may appear to be a contradiction. Occasionally these intersections lead to cognitive dissonance whereby accepting one identity indicates the denial of another. This structured discussion will focus on two specific identities, identifying as a feminist and identifying with a culture that is patriarchal. Patriarchal cultures typically have values that are viewed as oppressive to women. Take for example the Hmong culture where daughters are traditionally raised under the notion that they will one day marry and no longer belong with their birth family. Upon marriage, Hmong daughters will be a part of their husband’s family instead. This belief traditionally privileges Hmong sons and men over Hmong daughter or women. Another example is when Hmong women get out of abusive marriages and experience shaming and rejection from their own community. Some Hmong women believe their culture or even their birth parents have betrayed them. Feeling rejected by other Hmong people, divorced Hmong women often feel as though they cannot go back to their cultural community. The current structured discussion will provide some cultural contexts to the examples provided above. The goal of the discussion is to compile ideas for women who feel like they have been wronged by their culture so they may have restorative justice. This discussion gives women in psychology a chance to voice stories, opinions, and ideas on how to be a feminist within a patriarchal culture.

Media coverage of Michael Brown’s murder and Ferguson protests have brought into the national spotlight issues that have affected communities of color, particularly black communities, for decades. Although various activist organizations have joined in solidarity with this movement (Bosman, 2014), mainstream media attention is waning and the U.S. government has taken a passive approach (Horwitz & Kindy, 2014; Trott, 2014). As students in counseling psychology, we have found ourselves wondering what the role of psychologists (and future psychologists) can and should be in this movement. Within our own graduate program, a discussion group has evolved out of these events, but deciding how to take action beyond discussion has proven more difficult to accomplish. Racial justice is long overdue--over 150 years since the abolition of slavery, and we are still waiting. Considering the conference theme, we seek to explore what restorative justice might look like in in the case of communities like Ferguson. In areas with a long history of institutional power being used to exploit and oppress, where might the community even begin to restore justice? How can psychologists be most helpful to the social movements already in progress to combat these injustices? What about graduate students? Certainly, research on white privilege and racial prejudice has been one major contribution of the field and should not be discounted. For example, Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie and Davies (2004) found that white males processed weapon imagery faster when primed with black male faces compared to the no-prime control and processed these same images slower when primed with white faces compared to the no-prime control. Although published in 2004, the research remains pertinent today and has clear implications for legislation surrounding events like Michael Brown’s murder. But what is our responsibility to more immediate action when innocent people are dying?

Feminist multicultural therapists assert that contextual factors, such as oppression and discrimination, contribute to psychological distress, limit access to resources and information, and isolate individuals from sustaining communities (e.g., Brown, 2010). They suggest that participation in social justice activism contributes to psychological wellbeing, such as increased empowerment, social connectedness, and resilience (e.g., Arczynski, 2014; Worell & Remer, 2003). Activism is also a way people may nurture and care for themselves as well as others in their community(s) while reducing oppression, harassment, and marginalization. Hagen (2013) demonstrated that individuals with diverse circumstances, with varied social identities, and from various social contexts may prefer different types of social justice activism. Further, the different activisms people reported preferring and engaging in held different socio-cultural-political meaning and relevance based on their beliefs, values, and experiences of oppression and privilege (Hagen, 2013). The purpose of this structured discussion is to cultivate participants’ empowerment to create positive social change in their varied communities. We will encourage a broad conceptualization of activism in order to include behaviors and strategies on micro, meso/community, and macro levels. We will give attention and sensitivity to different socio-cultural perspectives on oppression, power, and privilege. First, we focus on discussing specific concerns and experiences of oppression and marginalization relevant to participants’ communities (e.g., home, work, churches, families, friend networks). Then, we anticipate dialoguing about specific social justice activisms that participants presently engage in or have interest in doing in order to target oppression observed in participants’ local and national communities. Last, we will encourage participants to brainstorm strategies for collaborating with other people to increase social support; challenge discrimination, and increase access to opportunities, information, and resources. In this structured discussion, we will address challenges and benefits associated with engaging in activism.

Many of us have been trained as change agents in psychology. Women of Color of diverse Asian ethnicities raised at the intersections of gender and ethnic socialization have challenged dominant discourses of the quiet, subservient Asian female worker bee (Okubo, 2013). This panel of women of Japanese, Korean and Filipina descent, trained as counseling psychologists early and mid-career academics but working in non-counseling graduate programs as faculty members and in senior administration will facilitate a discussion on issues related to race, gender, power and privilege and strategies to leverage privileges we have to disrupt oppressive practices in the academia. Counseling Psychologists have unique training that allow us to be aware of power, privilege, and oppression at individual, cultural, institutional, and societal levels, and we are equipped to facilitating dialogues and concerted effort to instigating positive, meaningful changes. By critically examining our positionalities and missed opportunities from the past, we would like to engage with the discussion attendees to generate action plans as social change agents. We would like to facilitate the structured discussion using the following questions: How can we leverage our positionalities to be more effective allies considering our interactionality of privileged and marginalized identities? What have been the missed opportunities? How are we unwittingly serving as what Kivel calls the buffer class between the 1% and the lowest earning 80%? By identifying such instances and learning from them, we aim to facilitate discussion of how we can instigate meaningful changes as social change agents.

This open-hearted invitation for Jewish women will consider: “It was not enough to take the Jews out of Egypt; it was also necessary to take Egypt out of the Jews.” We will compassionately challenge ourselves to confront fears, face discomfort, and envision just, peaceful and secure futures for Palestinian-and-Israeli peoples.

The present discussion will explore (1) the difficulties faced by international students, (2) the function of clinical supervision and academic advising to help reduce and manage the stressors and discrimination experienced by international students in counseling psychology, and (3) discuss the multicultural differences that affect professional and personal identity of the students.

The interaction of the Middle Eastern culture and its constrained depiction of sexuality has brought oppression to women and non-heteronormative sexualities. Middle Eastern women have been desexualized, and this creates an imminent need for a platform for Middle Eastern women to voice and begin a dialogue to reframe their sexuality.

Mandated reporting in psychotherapy is a frequently used intervention. Though the intent of the practice is to be therapeutic in its aim to protect children from inadequate or harmful care, the consequences of its execution can contradict its intent. This presentation will examine these contradictions and the ways in which dynamics of oppression, re-traumatization, and colonization are being expressed through mandated reporting laws. Using post colonial race theory, along with relational and social justice perspectives I will discuss the perpetuation and maintenance of a pervasive culture of oppression, where families of color are intruded upon, separated, and demeaned, in a disabling dynamic of powerlessness. The relationships between corporal punishment and discipline, and between families of color and institutional intervention will be observed through a historical lens. The instillation of fear and exhibition of power for purposes of control and capital are tactics that are still preserved in more subtle and nuanced way. This has been observed in my work in school-based and outpatient community mental health settings with primarily African American children and their mothers. Fear and distrust of the “system” (i.e. Therapists power/privilege to report abuse, threat of removal of children form home, the) in the context of therapy displayed by child clients and their mothers often complicates and slows an already vulnerable process of entering and remaining open through treatment. Consideration of the entire family system receives little attention or clinical thought, when reporting situations arise. Emphasis will be given to finding space to think about the impacts of this practice, while considering alternatives and/or modifications to approaching and implementing this intervention, with an interest in portraying and offering a less threatening, more therapeutic stance for families.

This structured discussion will explore how we as mental health professionals can utilize feminist and multicultural psychology to engage clients in awareness of gender role socialization in ways that increase clients’ empowerment and promote restorative justice, particularly in the face of violence. Drawing on clinical experience and relevant literature, facilitators will consider ideas for effective therapeutic intervention and potential avenues for enhancing clinical training. Gender roles are the behaviors that individuals perform based on socially constructed expectations about what constitutes masculinity and femininity (Mahalik, Cournoyer, DeFranc, Cherry, & Napolitano, 1998). Recent literature on the topic emphasizes the effects of socialization that lead to adoption of gender roles and addresses the need to redefine power-based constructions of gender (Enns, 2004; Jones, 2003). Research has also begun to acknowledge the differences in gender roles across race and ethnicity (Crawford & Unger, 2004; Miville, 2013). In some cultures, unquestioned adaptation of prescribed gender roles, especially when they have power-based sociopolitical implications, can affect a person’s physical and mental wellbeing (Miville, Bratini, Corpus, Diaz, 2013). Using therapy to address such dynamics, clients may be better able to develop a fuller sense of themselves as gendered beings, which in turn may foster greater psychological health (Miville, Bratini, Corpus, & Diaz, 2013). In working with clients from a feminist perspective, special attention should be placed on the impact of gender role identity on physical and emotional violence, which requires therapists to explore clients’ beliefs related to masculinity and femininity (Sokoloff & Dupont, 2005). Special attention should be placed on how a female client’s gender role identity may impact her experience and understanding of physical and emotional violence (Crenshaw, 1991). In addition, when working through experiences of violence in therapy, an examination of gender role expectations may provide female clients with a deeper understanding of such experiences. It may also facilitate an opening to explore novel ways of developing restorative empowerment as clients heal from violence-related experiences. Per recent feminist literature, as instances of violence around the world increase, it becomes ever more imperative that the racial, ethnic, and gendered differences of such experiences are addressed (Crawford & Unger, 2004). It is therefore vital for therapists to gain an awareness of the influence of gender socialization on their clients’ lives and frame the context of therapy from this lens (Steigerwald & Forrest, 2004). Therapists should also evaluate how their own gender-based beliefs may contribute to their conceptualizations of the issues presented by their clients (Steigerwald & Forrest, 2004).

Forced sterilization of women of color, including women with disabilities, has been an ongoing—though seldomly discussed—practice within the United States from the late 1800s through the present day (Lawrence, 2014). As recently as September 2014 , Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill banning California prisons from forcibly sterilizing women (Bhattarcharjee, 2014). The forced sterilization of women with disabilities is part of a larger historical trend within the U.S. that has used social policies, such as institutionalization and termination of parental rights, to regulate the mothering of women with disabilities (Lightfoot & LaLiberte, 2010). Additionally, women with disabilities contend with norms of femininity including idealized motherhood (Malacrida, 2009). In such a sociocultural atmosphere that condones the forced sterilization of women with disabilities, how do women cope with the psychological repercussions of sterilization and how do institutions that have been responsible for violating the reproductive rights of women begin to repair damage they have caused? How does this history of oppression influence the maternal identity development (Meighan, 2006) and reproductive story development (Jaffe & Diamond, 2010) of women with disabilities? The purpose of this purposed structured discussion is to examine restorative practices such as community, restorative circles, conflict management, and shame management (Wachtel, 2013) that will bring healing to the community of women with disabilities given the history of forced sterilization (Cohen & Bohifield, 2012; Nicholson, 2014) and facilitate a more positive maternal identity development. Two of the three presenters are mothers with disabilities. Through case studies of women who have experienced forced sterilization and mothers with disabilities, participants will explore and discuss issues of sexuality, maternal identity development, and the development of the reproductive story in the context of health disparities, especially with regard to obstetric/gynecological health of women with disabilities. References Bhattarcharjee, R. (2014, September 26). California bill bans forced sterilization of female inmates. September 26, 2014. NBC Bay Area. Retrieved from: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Gov--Jerry-Brown-Signs-bill-to-End-Forced-Prison-Sterilization--277229702.html Cohen, E. & Bonifield, J. (2012, March 15). California’s dark legacy of forced sterilizations. CNN Health. Retrieved from: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/15/health/california-forced-sterilizations/ Jaffe, J. & Diamond, M.O. (2010). Reproductive trauma: Psychotherapy with infertility and pregnancy loss clients. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Lawrence, M. (2014). Reproductive rights and state institutions: The forced sterilization of minority women in the United States (Senior Thesis). Retrieved from: http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/theses/390 Lightfoot, E. & LaLiberte, T. (2010). The inclusion of disability as a condition for termination of parental rights. Child Abuse and Neglect, 34, 927-934. Malacrida, C. (2009). Performing motherhood in a disablist world: Dilemmas of motherhood, femininity, and disability. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 22(1), 99-117. Doi: 10.1080/09518390802581927 Meighan, M. (2006). Ramona T. Mercer: Maternal role attainment – becoming a mother. In A.M. Tomey & M.R. Alligood (Eds.), Nursing theorists and their work (pp. 605-622). St. Lous, MO: Mosby Elsevier. Nicholson, L. (2014, June 22). Confirmed: 39 women illegally sterilized in California prisons. Reuters. Retrieved from: http://rt.com/usa/167660-california-illegal-sterilization-women/ Wachtel, T. (2013). Defining restorative. International Institute of Restorative Practices. Retrieved from: http://www.iirp.edu/pdf/Defining-Restorative.pdf

Depth psychological theories, which honor the reality of the unconscious, often hold the reputation of an individualistic psychology, one in which the external realities of oppression may be overlooked in favor of one’s inner landscape (Altman, 2004; Layton, 2009; Watkins, 2000) This dialogue endeavors to challenge the binaried reputation and highlight the unique position a depth perspective holds; one of psyche in the world, where dreams and images co-mingle with the distinctive external realities of daily living particular to each person. Feminist psychological theories provide a framework for encountering privilege, marginalization, and the socially constructed differences that make up the world we share (Butler, 1990). By fostering a dialogue in which the tension between self and other is deconstructed we will enable a subsequent exploration of intersectionality as a point of convergence and elaboration for feminist depth practices. Through the exploration of historical to present day activism within depth psychological practices participants will discover ways in which social justice was an integral component of the early approaches to psychoanalysis and played a formative role in the shaping of psychological theories such as Freudian, Jungian, and Adlerian as well as contributed to contemporary theories within humanistic and feminist theoretical approaches (Layton, 2000; Watkins, 2000). Additionally, a critical exploration of the ways in which depth psychologists have turned away from the realities of injustice in favor of the sanctified consulting room will be addressed. This relevant critique will serve to foster intentionality and the valuing of differences by creating community that is meaningful and edifying for all beings. The dialogue will culminate in a collaborative envisioning of the ways in which depth psychologists can engage more deeply in tending to the healing of both the individual patient as well as this dynamic shared world. References Altman, N. (2004). History repeat itself in transference: Countertransference. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 14(6). Butler , J. (1990), Gender trouble, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic discourse. In: Feminism/Postmodernism, (Ed.). L. J. Nicholson. New York, London: Routledge, pp. 324-340. Layton, L. (2000). Identity, and sexuality: Discourses of fragmentation. In Rudnytsky, P.,Gordon, A. Psychoanalyses/Feminisms. New York, NY: State University of New York Press. Layton, L. (2009). Who’s responsible? Our mutual implication in each other’s suffering. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 19:105–120. doi:10.1080/10481880902779695. Watkins, M. (2000). Depth psychology and the liberation of being. In R. Brooke (Ed.), Pathways into the Jungian World: Phenomenology and Analytical Psychology. London: Routledge.

Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Trayvon Martin, and Jordan Davis are all Black men who were murdered unjustly either by the police or by a racially motivated white male. There names have made national headlines, and many Black communities and individuals have mobilized to call for justice in their honor, and in the honor and protection of all Black boys and men. The many protest and communal actions that have ensued are evidence of great acts of resistance and social justice mobilizing that proudly state “Black lives matter!”, however, when Black women—especially Black trans women—are slaughtered daily and by the dozens, these same acts of communal mobilizing and vigils of honor are non-existent. President Obama and many other political officials and scholars have righteously given support and condolences in the murders of the aforementioned slain men, yet, little to no consolation, acknowledgement, nor support have been given to Tarika Wilson, Aiyana Jones, Shantel Davis, Rekia Boyd, Islan Nettles, Chanelle Pickett, Nireah Johnson, Erica Keels, Dana A. Larkin, Duana Johnson, Brandy Martell, and Yazmin Sanchez, all Black females—both cis and transgender—who have been unjustly murdered and forgotten. This structured discussion is guided by a Black feminist framework (Collins, 1991) and also by W.E.B. DuBois’ double consciousness (1903). As Black feminist thought seeks to move the stories and experiences of Black women from margin to center, and Black women are simultaneously doubly conscious of the plights of Black men. Thus, our goal is not to create a hierarchy of oppression, but instead, to restore justice and equality to Black women. Moreover, the aim of this talk is to begin to think about how we as feminist psychologist can assist in restoration of justice and voice to Black women.

What is wrong with the current response to gender violence? How should that response be different? To answer these questions, the Re-Imagining multimediaproject will be launched as part of Media for Change’s (MfC, mediaforchange.org) series, Changing the Conversation. MfC is a new non-profit and open-access online resource founded by documentary filmmaker Sanjeev Chatterjee to recognize and support the work of activists in using media for social change. Toward this end, Re-Imagining emerged from interviews on and around the 2014 conference CONVERGE: Re-imagining the Movement to End Gender Violence (http://www.law.miami.edu/academics/converge/index.php?op=0), where Arrested Justice author Beth Richie raised the same questions in her keynote address. Re-Imagining introduces the public to the ways in which the dominant response to domestic violence and sexual assault are criminal law centered, the dominant responses have failed to address structural inequalities, and the system intersectionality of the criminal justice system, welfare system, and child welfare system has had a negative impact (Dorothy Roberts, 2012) on women of color. In the multimedia content, leading scholars and activists Dorothy Roberts, Mimi Kim, Leigh Goodmark, Beth Richie, Joan Pennell, Donna Coker, and others speak to these problems and suggest alternative community responses, including Transformative Justice and Restorative Justice. The next iteration of Re-Imagining will likely include on-site videos with organizations involved in alternative responses to gender violence, including Transformative and Restorative Justice. The site will ultimately link to many other websites recognizing interlocking oppressions and working to diminish the carceral state. At the AWP Conference, we hope to dialogue with feminist psychologists about our evolving tool for sparking critical conversations and actions. Our goal is a general shift from dominant, crime-centered, gender violence responses, towards strengthening community-based strategies and alternatives.

The New Yorker (August, 2014) recently published a scathing article in which many second wave and radical feminist were virulently attacking trans women and stating they were not women. While the article made some erroneous assertions, and misquoted a few of the radical feminist such as Michelle Wallace, many radical feminist and non-feminist transphobic women do feel that trans women are not women. However, many transsexual women, particularly African American transsexual women, indicate that their experiences are more closely related to their cis-gender counterparts than to their gender queer and gender variant transgender cohorts (Brown, 2015), which begs the questions what defines being a woman and are radical feminists really attempting to protect womanhood or are they creating more oppression and hatred by suggesting that only those women who were assigned female at birth are women? This structured discussion is guided by an intersectionality framework (Combahee River Collective, 1982; Crenshaw, 1993) and loosely investigates gender schema theory (Bem, 1981). Bem’s pioneering work on gender schema and sex typing helped to pave the way for how we investigate gender in psychology today, and how we have come to understand how individuals make meaning of their gender identity; however, Bem admits herself that her work was limited in it scope, thus, in combining an intersectionality framework with a Bem's social psychological theorizing on gender, we are hoping to expand on the notions of gender identity and what defines a woman.

As psychology continues in its journey of multicultural awareness and inclusion, academic programs strive to make their faculty more diverse, particularly recruiting women of color psychologists. However, some women of color academics might argue that the academe is still an unwelcoming environment and that fosters “ambiguous empowerment” (Turner, 2002). Women of color often experience being treated as a “token” and feel pressured to assimilate while also serving as sole ambassadors for their culture and cultures of other minority individuals (Kanter, 1977). These can lead to increased levels of stress and job dissatisfaction for women of color as they try to navigate authenticity between their person and professional selves (Hume, 1998). The purpose of this roundtable is to provide an opportunity for women of color to share their experiences in professional psychology (both practice and academic) and provide safe space for psychologists to brainstorm how to make counseling psychology a more inclusive environment for women of color. In particular, the discussion will be centered around experiences of multiple marginality, making academic and professional programs more aware of the unique challenges that women of color face and to help make campuses more inclusive for this unique population.

My dissertation topic is rooted in my own experiences as a feminist, bisexual White woman in a graduate program. As I reviewed the literature, I began with women, trying to find research that suggested that women still were experiencing sexism while in their graduate programs. This proved somewhat difficult and I was surprised to find that there was not as much recent evidence as I had anticipated. I began to explore other “differences”, including race, ethnicity, international students, age, class, and motherhood. While I found some evidence of prejudice and discrimination within some studies (for example, Beoku-Betts, 2004; González, 2007), it was generally buried in the research, hidden in the measures the researchers gave, and not discussed at length in the articles. I found this interesting because my experiences and so many stories from other graduate students did not support these minor mentions and brief discussions of discrimination in academia. When I turned to look for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered students’ experiences in graduate school, I found two older dissertations that discussed gay and lesbians students’ experiences. I found this distressing. I wanted to know women graduate students’ stories and I believe there is a need within the literature to directly address and share narratives about graduate students’ experiences with prejudice and discrimination. I would like to gather graduate students for a discussion about the prejudice and discrimination that they experienced in graduate school. Having this discussion allows us to support each other and network.

“Graduate school in psychology was worst than rape! Because at least when I was raped, there were services and support groups. I had to endure the pain of being Black and female in graduate school alone…”—Dr. Aaronette White Before her passing, Dr. White was an associate professor of social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is perhaps better known for her work on rape and feminism, and the above quote was something that she maintained fiercely about some of her experiences in academia as a Black female psychologist. In using Dr. White’s quote as a springboard to undertake this discussion, we realize that there is much that we do not know about the often painful experiences of Black female psychologists in the academy. The discipline of psychology is still largely seen as predominantly White and male with rigid constructs and frameworks that often exclude African Americans in general, but particularly, Black female researchers. This becomes a social justice issue because Black women are being eliminated and excluded in psychology. However, we as feminist psychologists can assist in improving conditions for Black women in psychology by giving voice to these problems and working to end racism and sexism in psychology as a discipline. This project evolved out a Black feminist framework (Collins, 1991) and employs the theoretical frameworks of intersectionality (Combahee River Collective, 1982; Crenshaw, 1993), and critical psychology (Parker, 1999). This structured discussion aims to explore the experiences of Black women—and all women of color in the academy—from doctoral candidacy through professor emeritus.