History of Feminist Psychology at the University of Vienna, 1984–2000

Abstract

Feminist psychological knowledge production has flourished in the German-speaking countries since the late 1970s. But, in contrast to countries like the United States, Canada, or Great Britain, it only gained finite traction in the academy. During the late 1970s and 1980s, the so-called “project phase” of the second wave women’s movement saw the founding of counseling centers for women in Vienna and all over Austria. During the mid-1980s, students at the University of Vienna started recruiting feminist psychologists from the feminist counseling center Frauen beraten Frauen to teach courses on the psychology of women. From the mid-1980s until 2000, the Department of Psychology at the University of Vienna offered an unusually high number of courses in the psychology of women (up to ten seminars per semester and about 200 in total), turning the department into an unofficial and temporary teaching hub for feminist psychology. With 14 courses on the psychology of women, the academic year 1987/1988 marks the apogee of feminist psychological teaching by adjunct lecturers at the Department of Psychology. During the 1990s, it was again students who fought for and succeeded in having several guest professors in the psychology of women appointed at the Department of Psychology. This pinnacle period for the interrelation of feminist teaching and research saw not only the development of new didactic methods but also some continuity in the collaboration of a guest professor, adjunct lecturers, and students as well as a plethora of feminist psychological theses written by students.