Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development

Abstract

This slender book describes in some detail interviews the authors had over a period of several years with girls in a private girls' school, from the ages of seven or eight up to 17 or 18, but concentrating on the ages of 11 through 13. The authors are an educator and a psychologist noted for feminist work. They found they could not get the girls to respond to the usual method in psychology of tests and questionnaires, and instead took a rather loose approach of interviews, often by different interviewers over the years. They are aware that they are subject to criticism by scientific purists but present the raw data as a matter of interest anyway. The method is a reminder of some of Piaget's work, but without any testing. Conventional psychologists could complain that all the girls were not interviewed at the same ages or even over the same