The Psychological is Political

In 2016, Austria ranked 53rd in the international Global Gender Gap Report, losing 15 ranks from 2015. This development needs to be countered on many levels including science. In order to reach real gender equality in Austrian society it is indispensable that the psychological dimensions of gender inequality be addressed in at least three ways: First, the psychological reasons for women and men not to counter gender discrimination need to be studied scientifically. Second, the consequences of gender inequalities for the psychological health and wellbeing of those affected must be understood scientifically. And third, these psychological consequences need to be addressed by psychosocial services that take into account the social dimension of psychological suffering. These approaches need not be invented anew because in Austria like in other places, there is a wealth of knowledge on all these three layers that need only be excavated, documented, and made available to a larger public, which is precisely what the proposed project aims to do. The Psychological is Political aims to analyze how knowledge about the psychological dimensions of gender discrimination developed in Vienna between 1972 and 2000. In the early 1970s, activists of the womens movement began examining the conditions and psychological effects of discrimination against women. Observing how inequality or discrimination caused harm, activists were soon offering specialized counseling and psychotherapy. In the course of time, this focus was broadened to include the lives and experiences of those who do not comply with heterosexuality or who do not identify as the sex they were assigned at birth. While the history of knowledge production about the psychological conditions and consequences of gender inequality is well documented particularly in the USA, Canada and Great Britain, there is strikingly little literature on the subject in the German- speaking countries. This project is designed to fill this gap. It is our contention that knowledge about the psychological dimension of gender inequality, for example, has burgeoned in Austria especially since the late 1970s, only that for various reasons it has not been able to gain a foothold in academia. Through archival research and oral history interviews, we will reconstruct how this knowledge was used and produced in Vienna, in feminist consciousness-raising groups (e.g., AUF Aktion Unabhängiger Frauen and at so-called Volkshochschulen), in womens counseling and information centers (e.g., Frauen beraten Frauen, Peregrina, Lefö, Ninlil), and at the Department of Psychology at the University of Vienna from 1972 until the the year 2000. In our analysis, we will focus on the institutional and social context of psychological knowledge about the psychological conditions and consequences of gender inequality in order to get a sense of the conditions that have facilitated or hindered the development of knowledge about the psychological dimensions of gender inequality.

Austria is a sad front-runner in the EU in terms of violence against women. This is despite the fact that experts point out that in order to reduce gender-based violence, gender equality is needed throughout society. Gender inequalities have psychological effects (e.g. psychological stress) and psychological causes (e.g. repression). Our project examined how knowledge about the psychological dimensions of gender inequality developed in three social fields in Austria: (1) the second women's movement, which began in Austria in 1972; (2) autonomous women's counseling centers such as Frauen* beraten Frauen*, Peregrina, Miteinander Lernen, and Lefö since 1981; and (3) the University of Vienna, where an extraordinary amount of teaching on this topic took place between 1984 and 2000. The logic of these social fields influences what knowledge is developed about the psychological dimensions of gender inequality, what interventions are derived from it, and how it is disseminated. Moreover, we explored how knowledge moved across these social fields. Three processes influenced knowledge about the psychological effects and causes of gender inequality as it moved from the women's movement to women's counseling and then to the university: (1) Psychologization processes were already evident in the women's movement. Consciousness-raising groups arrived in psychologized form as "self-awareness groups" from the United States to German-speaking countries in the early to mid-1970s. Many of these practices were adopted by women's counseling centers. (2) With the establishment of associations and with the acquisition of funding, processes began that we describe as NGOization. As non-profit associations, women's counseling centers are close to the problems of diverse women in Austria and can flexibly adapt their knowledge and their counseling and treatment services to them. However, they are dependent on different sources of funding, and the requirements of funding agencies (e.g., to the organizational form or through project funding) as well as chronic underfunding shape what knowledge can be developed and how comprehensively it can be implemented in practice. Although most women's counseling centers engage in outreach and can thus influence public awareness about the psychological effects and causes of gender inequality, as nonprofit associations they face limits to political activity. (3) On the way from women's counseling to the University of Vienna, processes of academization take hold. Here we explored the reasons why knowledge about the psychological dimensions of gender inequality developed in women's counseling has not been able to establish itself in the long term at universities and has hardly entered the training of prospective psychologists. Our project was thus able to clarify not only how knowledge about psychological effects and causes of gender inequality has developed in Austria, but also why this body of knowledge has not yet led to comprehensive gender justice.