Abstract
Psychology of Women Quarterly (PWQ) is a leading outlet for feminist psychology research. To elucidate the interrelations of PWQ publications over time, we conducted a citation network analysis of its 2,747 articles and 4,517 citation links. Of the 16 citation clusters that emerged, many echoed key elements of PWQ's scope. These included Cluster 1: feminist consciousness and sexism; Cluster 2: body image and objectification; Cluster 3: feminist psychology, epistemology, and methodology; Cluster 4: gender and educational and occupational experiences; Cluster 5: rape and sexual assault; Cluster 6: power and violence in close relationships; Cluster 7: sexual harassment and workplace discrimination; and Cluster 8: women and power with attention to race and nation. Areas of citation disconnection revealed avenues for resisting citation silos and advancing pantheoretical feminist frameworks on the continuum of patriarchal violence. Small and discontinued clusters were areas ripe for feminist revisiting (e.g., reproductive justice). PWQ articles were cited in an increasing number and breadth of journals over time. These findings can inform authors, reviewers, and editors to advance the next decades of scholarship in PWQ in ways that resist citation silos, revive research on critical domains of women's lives, and foster the feminist edge of our scholarship.
Keywords
The year 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the formation of the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 35, Society for the Psychology of Women, and the Division Executive Board's vote to establish Psychology of Women Quarterly (PWQ) as its flagship journal (Babladelis, 1976; Mednick & Urbanski, 1991). Launched in 1976 as a feminist intervention against the sexist traditions of psychology, PWQ is now under the leadership of its 10th editor and approaching its own 50th anniversary, making this an apt moment for reflection and analysis of the journal. In PWQ's first pages, its inaugural editor, Georgia Babladelis (1976) stated that a principal purpose of the journal was to disseminate scholarship on the psychology of women that redresses deeply established androcentric bias in psychology. This vision has been carried forward by each of PWQ's subsequent editors, along with the explicit assertion that PWQ is a venue for feminist psychology scholarship (e.g., Brabeck, 2016; Henley, 1981; Russo, 1995; Stake, 2005; Szymanski, 2020; White, 2000; Worell, 1990; Yoder, 2010).
In the nearly five decades since PWQ's launch, its Editorial Boards and contributors have broadened the journal's audience to include authors and readers across disciplines beyond psychology. In addition, they have expanded PWQ's scope to reflect feminist scholarship in a variety of domains. Accordingly, the journal description has evolved over time (as reflected in print issues), with the 2022 journal scope stated to include “feminist approaches, methodologies, and critiques; violence against women; body image and objectification; sexism, stereotyping, and discrimination; intersectionality of gender with other social locations (such as age, ability status, class, ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation); international concerns; lifespan development and change; physical and mental well-being; therapeutic interventions; sexuality; social activism; and career development” (Sage Journals, n.d.-a). As of May 2022, Journal Citation Reports placed PWQ among the top outlets in Women's Studies (first out of 44 journals based on five-year impact factor) and in multidisciplinary psychology journals (18th out of 141 journals based on five-year impact factor) (Sage Journals, n.d.-b). Clearly, PWQ has been a key outlet for feminist scholarship on the psychology of women and gender and is home to pivotal publications advancing theory, methodology, and empirical data in a range of content domains in feminist psychology.
Given the importance of PWQ to the field, reflecting on its evolution to inform and guide its future directions is valuable for the journal, including its authors, reviewers, and editors, as well as for the field of feminist psychology more broadly. Indeed, scholars have assessed select PWQ content to reflect on the field and guide future directions (e.g., Fine, 1985; Rutherford & Yoder, 2011). In the present study, we extend these prior analyses of select PWQ publications by conducting a citation network analysis of all PWQ publications to date. Different from content-based analyses, citation network analysis elucidates a body of literature based on how scholars use (i.e., cite) publications over time. Thus, citation network analysis allows us to explore the breadth and evolution of PWQ publications based on citation patterns rather than on what investigators judge publications to be about. For example, a citation network analysis of the Journal of Counseling Psychology (Parent et al., 2021) revealed a cluster that included articles on gender, race, and sexuality (e.g., Black racial identity, heterosexism, and sexual objectification of women) along with key articles on methodological and statistical advances (e.g., testing mediation and moderation, and missing data management). This set of articles would not be combined in a traditional content analysis focused on topic domains, but their convergence in citation network analysis demonstrates that “diversity” publications have evolved at a time when expectations for methodological and analytic sophistication are high and that diversity-focused publications use (and have to demonstrate that they use) these advances. This evidence contradicts academic biases (e.g., in tenure and promotion reviews) that diversity scholarship is less rigorous than “general” scholarship.
In this way, citation network analysis can also attend to citation practices themselves as a political and consequential mechanism through which particular domains of knowledge and knowledge producers are carried forward or made invisible over time (e.g., Moradi et al., 2020). For example, a citation network analysis of intersectionality scholarship (Moradi et al., 2020) revealed greater citation connectivity for articles focusing on conceptual, methodological, and analytic issues than for foundational activist-scholarship aiming to elucidate and disrupt interlocking oppressions. This illustrates how citation practices contribute to the privileging and proliferation of traditional academic interests over activist-scholarship as canon. Indeed, activist-scholars (e.g., Cite Black Women, n.d.) highlight the importance of recognizing citation practices as an enactment and reclamation of power in academia. Thus, with a focus on how authors use PWQ publications, this study elucidates domains in PWQ's citation network, how these domains are connected or disconnected over time, and what new areas of convergence may advance future scholarship.
Prior Analyses of PWQ and Feminist Psychology of Women
Analysis of journal citations has a long history. Early analyses of psychology journal citations focused on citation counts rather than citation networks (e.g., Rushton & Roediger, 1978; White & White, 1977). However, the scope of these analyses preceded PWQ; published analyses of PWQ have been content-based rather than focused on citation counts or networks. In the first published analysis of PWQ that we identified, Fine (1985) reviewed the content of 106 articles published in PWQ between 1978 and 1981; she analyzed samples, contexts, outcomes, and conclusions of these publications. Across the empirical studies, Fine (1985) found that approximately half of the samples were college women, three quarters did not mention racial composition, and social class was generally not described, leading her to call for more attention to these axes of inequality and to the diversity of women's experiences. Fine (1985) found a range of life contexts reflected in the research, including workplace and academic experiences, child-bearing decisions, interpersonal and family relationships, and consciousness-raising and therapy experiences. She also found a more traditional psychological focus on personality characteristics and perceptions of hypothetical research stimuli. In terms of outcomes of focus, she found that about two-thirds of the studies focused on abilities, traits, and attitudes; other outcomes included interpersonal relationships and group processes.
Fine (1985) also offered a critical analysis of the types of conclusions drawn across the PWQ articles in her analysis. Specifically, she cautioned about three ways in which these publications could replicate problematic aspects of traditional psychology: drawing overly optimistic conclusions about progress toward gender equality that obscure the realities of women's experiences, “psychologizing” or reverting to internal explanations for social conditions and inequalities, and promoting individual strategies for change rather than advocating for collective efforts and structural change. These cautions and Fine's (1985) review were particularly apt in a historical moment of ebbing feminist advances, including Congressional failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982.
Two other commentaries included an analysis of select PWQ publications near the same time period. Lykes and Stewart (1986) compared publications in PWQ with those in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) between 1978 and 1983. Consistent with Fine's (1985) call for a feminist psychology, Lykes and Stewart (1986) were interested in the extent to which feminist values were reflected in these journals’ publications. They found multiple differences between the journals which they interpreted as indicating the greater influence of feminist values in PWQ than in JPSP. Specifically, they found that compared to JPSP, PWQ had fewer college-only and men-only studies, greater methodological diversity, and greater attention to gender in research questions and to topics stereotyped as feminine. Shortly after, Mednick (1991) reviewed publications in PWQ and Sex Roles between 1988 and 1989 for her Carolyn Wood Sherif Award address. Similar to Fine (1985), she noted that common topics of focus in this set of publications were violence, career, achievement and work, health, mental health, and sex role attitudes and stereotypes. Mednick (1991) also echoed Fine's (1985) call for greater attention to the diversity of women's experiences along with age, class, ethnicity, and race.
Rutherford and Yoder (2011) offered the next cataloging of PWQ publications as part of the launch of PWQ's 35th anniversary special section series. They examined the top 100 cited PWQ articles according to Web of Science data. Based on this review, they identified four major content domains among the selected PWQ publications: (a) feminist approaches, methods, and critiques; (b) violence against women; (c) women and girls in context, gender roles, and sexism; and (d) women's bodies and sexualities. Consistent with Fine's (1985) call for attention to the contexts of women's lives, these domains reveal the establishment of feminist psychology epistemology as well as its application in key domains of relevance to women's lived experiences.
In addition to the preceding analyses of PWQ, two other analyses of feminist psychology (Crawford & Marecek, 1989) and psychology of women and gender (Eagly et al., 2012) offer useful context for the present study. In an important reflection on the field, Crawford and Marecek (1989) delineated a framework of early feminist psychology scholarship. Theirs was not an empirical analysis and it did not focus specifically on PWQ. However, Crawford and Marecek (1989) offered a critical appraisal of the state of feminist psychology that included attention to PWQ. Moreover, given the sustained vision for PWQ as a key outlet for feminist psychology scholarship (e.g., Brabeck, 2016; Henley, 1981; Szymanski, 2020; Worell, 1990; Yoder, 2010), Crawford and Marecek's (1989) insights are relevant for analyses of PWQ. Specifically, Crawford and Marecek (1989) delineated the development of feminist psychology along four themes: rediscovering exceptional women and what makes them so; studying problems that affect women (and its anti-feminist formulation of studying women as problems); elucidating gender as power in social relations and organizations; and transforming psychology by uncovering and reimagining its epistemological, methodological, and political boundaries. Like Babladelis (1976), Crawford and Marecek (1989) contextualized feminist psychology as an intervention against a pre-feminist “womanless” psychology characterized by profound androcentrism that excluded women and denigrated women's experiences as legitimate foci in psychological inquiry. Crawford and Marecek (1989) cautioned against replicating these patterns; for example, conducting research on exceptional women that ignores the realities of most women's lives or research on problems affecting women that makes women the problem. Instead, they advocated for scholarship that would realize the transformational promise of feminist psychology, a call consistent with the vision and analysis that Fine (1985), Lykes and Stewart (1986), and Mednick (1991) offered for PWQ.
In a more recent empirical analysis of psychology of women and gender scholarship, Eagly et al. (2012) analyzed journal articles indexed in PsycInfo from 1960 to 2009. Again, their analysis did not focus on but included PWQ publications. Across their period of analysis, Eagly et al. (2012) found an increase in the total number of articles they identified as having a focus on the psychology of sex differences, gender, and women. When analyzed relative to the overall growth in psychology publications, however, the increase in psychology of sex differences, gender, and women publications was smaller and characterized by peaks followed by declines in the early 1980s and again in the late 1990s. The areas of psychology with the largest percentages of psychology of sex differences, gender, and women publications included the psychology of social issues, developmental psychology, and personality psychology. To assess attention to the diversity of women's experiences as reflected in the intersection of gender with other social categories, Eagly et al. (2012) analyzed the proportion of psychology of sex differences, gender, and women publications that included index terms related to race and ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation. They found a steady increase in the proportion of publications that addressed race and ethnicity, but relatively flat trajectories and lower proportions of publications that addressed social class or sexual orientation.
Eagly et al. (2012) also analyzed the trajectories of publications in six a priori topics; three that they viewed as integrating gender into existing psychology domains (gender stereotypes and sex role attitudes, gender and depression, work–family issues) and three that they viewed as addressing a feminist agenda (intimate partner violence, abortion, and sexual harassment). This analysis revealed modest but overall increases in publications on gender stereotypes and sex role attitudes, gender and depression, and work–family issues; there was a notable peak and fall in gender stereotypes and attitudes publications around 1980 (in the runup to Congressional failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and the anti-feminist backlash of the 1980s; Faludi, 1991). Similarly, there were modest increases in publications on abortion and sexual harassment and steeper growth in publications on intimate partner violence.
Importantly, only 3.4% of the psychology of sex differences, gender, and women publications in Eagly et al.'s (2012) analysis included explicit reference to feminist index terms and 9.1% appeared in psychology of women- and gender-focused journals (including PWQ). Thus, although there was an overall (albeit uneven) increase in psychology of sex differences, gender, and women publications during Eagly et al.'s (2012) period of analysis, 96.6% of these publications did not explicitly signal feminist analysis. This finding raises questions about the preponderance of non- (or anti-) feminist analysis of sex, gender, and women being published across psychology journals. This finding further underscores the importance of analyzing and informing the development of PWQ as a key outlet for explicitly feminist psychology scholarship (e.g., Brabeck, 2016; Henley, 1981; Szymanski, 2020; Worell, 1990; Yoder, 2010).
Citation Network Analysis
PWQ has served as a key outlet for scholarship characterized by advancing a clearly feminist epistemology, methodology, and praxis as envisioned by Crawford and Marecek (1989), Fine (1985), and Rutherford and Yoder (2011) and as articulated by its editors (Babladelis, 1976; Brabeck, 2016; Henley, 1981; Russo, 1995; Stake, 2005; Szymanski, 2020; White, 2000; Worell, 1990; Yoder, 2010). We build on the empirical and conceptual reflections that these scholars offered to conduct a citation network analysis of PWQ publications. Our citation network analysis extends prior analyses of select PWQ publications (e.g., Fine, 1985; Lykes & Stewart, 1986; Rutherford & Yoder, 2011) by analyzing all PWQ publications to the present (October, 2021). In addition, citation network analysis differs from and complements the prior conceptual and empirical content-based analyses. In content analyses, researchers code selected aspects of publications (e.g., topics and methods) according to the authors’ descriptions or the content analysts’ appraisals. By contrast, citation network analysis reveals the content and evolution of a body of literature based on how scholars use (i.e., cite) publications over time and across domains.
Specifically, citation network analysis is an extension of social network analysis (Marion et al., 2003) that explores connections among publications (instead of people) by using citation links as the data. Citation network analysis reveals the organic emergence of areas of emphasis in a body of literature based on how publications draw from and advance one another through citation practices. As such, citation network analysis reveals domains reflected in the citation patterns of a body of literature, how these domains are connected or disconnected via citations, and how these connections evolve over time to constitute a body of literature. These citation practices reflect a form of politics in knowledge production because they legitimize what knowledge and which knowledge producers are preserved and advanced in a body of literature. In this way, citation practices are an enactment of power in academia and an important point of analysis (e.g., Cite Black Women, n.d.). Citation network analyses have been conducted across numerous areas and scholarly journals, including engineering (e.g., Kajikawa & Takeda, 2009), counseling psychology (Parent et al., 2021), medicine (e.g., Shibata et al., 2011), masculinity studies (Parent et al., 2018), and intersectionality scholarship (Moradi et al., 2020).
Present Study
Building on prior assessments of select PWQ content (e.g., Fine, 1985; Lykes & Stewart, 1986; Rutherford & Yoder, 2011), in the current study, we conducted a citation network analysis of PWQ publications from the journal's inception in 1976 to October 30, 2021. In so doing, we aimed to elucidate the citation network of PWQ publications, including the scope of content areas, their evolution, and their interconnections as reflected in citation patterns. By analyzing citation networks, we complement and advance prior scholars’ focus on article content with a focus on how articles are used through citation practices. Specifically, we addressed the following questions:
Question 1: What are the content areas in PWQ publications’ citation network, including continuing and discontinued areas? How are the content areas situated in time and in relation to one another in citation connectivity? Question 2: What does PWQ's citation network landscape, including continuation-discontinuation and connection-disconnection in this landscape, reveal about opportunities for further collaboration and scholarly development? Question 3: What are PWQ's scopes of influence as reflected in citations of PWQ articles in other journals?
Method
We used Web of Science, which has a comprehensive index of PWQ, to extract PWQ publication data from the first issue in 1976 to October 30, 2021. To address the first two research questions, we used CitNetExplorer to conduct the citation network analysis (van Eck & Waltman, 2014). Given the focus of our analysis on PWQ, the citation network nodes were publications in PWQ and the citation links were their citations to other publications in PWQ. The dataset contained 2,747 publications and 4,517 citation links. In citation network analysis, the resolution of analysis sets how broad or fine-grained the grouping of publications into clusters will be. Resolution can be set at any level above 0; values of 1.00–2.00 typically produce interpretable solutions. Lower resolutions produce fewer clusters that are broader and more global (e.g., at the lowest resolution, the entire network would constitute a single cluster). Higher resolutions produce more clusters that are more specific and fine-grained (e.g., at the highest resolution, each publication would be its own cluster). The goal is to set a resolution that extracts a manageable and interpretable number of clusters that reflect meaningful domains in the network.
Although there are no definitive metrics for selecting an optimal resolution, a useful approach is to compare the first, and always largest, cluster across solutions. A resolution that yields a first cluster that contains too many of the network's publications suggests that the resolution is too low to detect important conceptual distinctions. Accordingly, we compared multiple resolutions. At a resolution of 0.75, 5 clusters emerged with the largest cluster containing 19% of the network. At a resolution of 1.0, 10 clusters emerged with the largest cluster containing 16% of publications. At a resolution of 1.25, 10 clusters emerged with the largest cluster containing 15% of publications. At a resolution of 1.50, 13 clusters emerged with the largest cluster containing 14% of the network. At a resolution of 1.75, 16 clusters emerged with the largest cluster containing 9% of the network. At a resolution of 2.0, 16 clusters emerged with the largest cluster containing 7% of the network. We reviewed the number of clusters and their content and judged that the resolution of 1.75 offered the best balance of a manageable number of interpretable clusters while minimizing the dominance of the first cluster.
To address the third research question, we used Web of Science's cited references search function to obtain data on all other indexed journals’ citations to PWQ articles. We assessed the data in terms of total citations to PWQ articles by the citing journals. We examined the data from 1976 to 2021 overall as well as by narrower time periods (1976–1990, 1991–2000, 2001–2010, and 2011–2021). We calculated the number of citations to PWQ articles by each citing journal, the percent of total citations to PWQ by each citing journal, and the cumulative percent of total citations to PWQ by the top citing journals.
Results
The citation network analysis of 2,747 PWQ publications yielded 4,517 citation links. A total of 1,426 publications were organized into 16 clusters based on their citation links. Another 1,321 publications, many of which were book reviews, were not clustered because they had minimal citations within the network (1,283 had zero citations, 35 had one citation, one had three citations, two had four citations in the network). Table 1 lists each cluster's publications with the highest citation counts in the network. Figure 1 visually depicts the citation network using all PWQ articles. For parsimony, the cluster borders in Figure 1 are defined by the most prominent citation nodes (i.e., most cited articles) rather than by all articles in the cluster. In this figure, vertical space represents time whereas horizontal space represents separation or overlap in citation interconnectivity. As such, clusters located vertically higher in Figure 1 emerged earlier in PWQ's history, and clusters located lower in the figure reflect more recent publications. In addition, clusters that appear closer to each other in horizontal space share more citation connectivity, indicating greater conceptual and empirical relatedness. In two-dimensional space, the combination of horizontal and vertical trajectories of clusters shows the evolution of scholarship over time. For example, in Figure 1, Cluster 1 emerges near and after Cluster 3, suggesting that the domain reflected in Cluster 1 was closely related to Cluster 3 but evolved with distinct citation patterns into its own domain of scholarship.
Simplified Graphical Representation of the Citation Network.
Citation Network Analysis Cluster Descriptions and Highest Citation Score Articles.
Note. Citation score reflects the number of times an article is cited in the citation network. The five most highly cited publications are displayed for each cluster, except for smaller clusters in which there were many ties at lower citation counts.
Circumscribed Domains
The remaining clusters were small and temporally circumscribed with limited citation connectivity to other clusters. Cluster 9 included 39 articles from 1976 to 2010 (median = 1983) with a focus on exceptional women and women in gender-nontraditional careers. Cluster 10 comprised 38 publications from 1976 to 2021 (median = 1989.5) with attention to same-sex relationships and sexual minority women. There was a gradual decline in the number of articles in this cluster in each decade after the 1980s. Cluster 11 included 37 publications from 1976 to 2015 (median = 1990) and focused on women and aging. Cluster 12 comprised 37 articles from 1977 to 2019 (median = 1991) on women's experiences of childbirth, parenting, parental leave, and intersections with employment. There was a precipitous decline in this cluster after the 1990s. Cluster 13 included 33 publications from 1976 to 2014 (median = 1985) focusing on perceptions of reproductive and familial roles for women and avenues for circumventing those expectations (e.g., math education). Cluster 14 comprised 23 publications from 1976 to 2006 (median = 1982) attending to women in leadership, token status, and professional role models. Cluster 15 included 13 articles spanning 1980 to 2004 (median = 1997) that focused on attitudes toward women and gender roles in different national and cultural contexts. Cluster 16 comprised 12 articles from 1982 to 2013 (median = 1994) attending to menstruation. Clusters 13, 14, 15, and 16 each were largely discontinued in PWQ after the 1990s.
PWQ Publications’ Influence in Other Journals
Table 2 presents the journals with the highest citations to PWQ articles that cumulatively comprised 30% of citations to PWQ during the full duration of analysis and in each decade of analysis. Sex Roles was the journal in which PWQ articles were most cited overall and in each decade. Across the decades of analysis, the number and breadth of journals in which PWQ articles were cited increased. Specifically, PWQ articles were cited in 401 journals between 1976 and 1990 compared to 3,668 journals between 2011 and 2021. Moreover, between 1976 and 1990, 30% of citations to PWQ articles appeared in five journals, two of which focused on psychology of women and gender. By comparison, between 2011 and 2021, 30% of citations to PWQ articles appeared in 34 journals which reflected a range of foci including psychology of women and gender, psychology of men and masculinity, personality and social psychology, counseling and applied psychology, interpersonal violence and violence against women, body image, sex and sexuality, health, and multidisciplinary open access journals.
Journals with Highest PWQ Citations up to 30% Cumulative Citations.
Discussion
In this study, we analyzed PWQ's citation network to elucidate content areas, their interconnections, and their evolution from the journal's inception in 1976 to October 30, 2021. Our citation network analysis reveals several trends in the landscape of PWQ's citation network. Specifically, the results demonstrate the citation network's evolution into multiple citation cluster domains (Question 1), some of which directly reflect the vision for the journal to theorize feminism, feminist psychology, and women's lived experiences. In addition, patterns of connection-disconnection across citation clusters suggest the generative potential for integrating knowledge bases across domains (Question 2). Results also reveal the growing influence of PWQ over time and across a broad range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary journals (Question 3). Importantly, many of the citation clusters that emerged in the present analysis align with PWQ's current scope as reflected in the 2022 journal description (Sage Journals, n.d.-a), including feminist approaches, methodologies, and critiques (Clusters 1 and 3); violence against women (Clusters 5 and 6); body image and objectification (Cluster 2); sexism, stereotyping, and discrimination (Clusters 1 and 7); intersections of gender with other social locations such as age, ability status, class, ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation (Clusters 8, 10, and 11); international concerns (Clusters 8 and 15); lifespan development and change (Cluster 11); physical and mental well-being and therapeutic interventions (present across clusters); sexuality (Cluster 10); activism (Clusters 1 and 3); and career development (Clusters 4, 7, 9, 12, 13, and 14). We interpret these citation patterns in the context of the original vision for PWQ and in relation to prior analyses of select PWQ and feminist psychology publications.
First, several of the largest and most central clusters in the PWQ citation network align with the foundational and contemporary aims of the journal to counter patriarchal traditions in psychology with a transformative scholarship that reflects explicitly feminist epistemology, methodology, and content (Babladelis, 1976; Fine, 1985). These central clusters comprised Cluster 3, which included articles that delineated feminist psychology as a field and articulated its epistemology and methodology. Crawford and Marecek's (1989) publication describing a vision for a transformative feminist psychology was the top-cited publication in this cluster and among the top 10 cited publications in the PWQ network. Cluster 3 was followed closely in time by Cluster 1, which was the largest cluster in the network and included publications on theory, measurement, and application of feminist consciousness and identity, sexist attitudes, and experiences of sexism. The temporal connection between Cluster 3 and its successor Cluster 1 is concordant with calls by Crawford and Marecek (1989) and Fine (1985) to connect feminist psychology with the realities of women's lives. Specifically, Cluster 3 reflected fundamental conceptual questions about defining feminist psychology and its successor Cluster 1, reflected articulating feminist psychology and methodology via women's lived experiences of sexism and feminist consciousness. Indeed, Cluster 1 included three of the top 10 most cited publications in the PWQ network, all of which were key articles advancing theory and measurement on feminist identity development (Bargad & Hyde, 1991), feminist attitudes (Henley et al., 1998), and women's experiences of sexism (Klonoff & Landrine, 1995).
Cluster 1 overlapped with Cluster 4, another large and central cluster that started with a focus on gender and educational and occupational experiences and transitioned to more recent articles connecting intersectional analysis with theory, methods, and analyses in psychology (Else-Quest & Hyde, 2016a, 2016b). Although this range of articles may seem disparate at first glance, this cluster is an example of how citation network analysis reveals patterns in use of articles versus their topics. Specifically, the earlier and later phases of Cluster 4 were connected via Yoder and Kahn's (2003) article which theorized gender as social context rather than as a demographic or group comparison variable. This article cited examples of research related to women's educational and occupational experiences to illustrate how gender operates as an axis of power in social contexts. Thus, while not grounded explicitly in intersectionality scholarship, Yoder and Kahn's (2003) pivotal article offered an intersectional analysis connecting conceptualizations of gender as roles, characteristics, and experiences in educational and occupational contexts with analysis of gender as structural power. In this way, the evolution of citation patterns in Cluster 4 reveals that articles on intersectionality in psychology are using (and crediting via citations) articles on gender and educational and occupational experiences and vice versa. This finding, like the finding of a citation cluster in the Journal of Counseling Psychology that combined gender, race, and sexuality research with articles on advanced methods and analysis (Parent et al., 2021), illustrates how articles might have high citation interconnectivity and be clustered together even if their topics of focus differ. Citation network analysis reveals patterns in use of articles, which is different and complementary to a focus on topics in content analysis.
Similarly, Cluster 8 overlapped with Clusters 1 and 4 and addressed gender equity and women and power with attention to race and nation. Together, these central clusters in the PWQ citation network (Clusters 1, 3, 4, and 8) echo the transformational feminist psychology that Crawford and Marecek (1989) and Fine (1985) envisioned for PWQ and the broader field. These clusters map the formation of feminist psychology comprising an explicitly feminist epistemology, methodology, and scholarly content. These citation network-based clusters also fit with Rutherford and Yoder's (2011) content-based analysis that “feminist approaches, methods, and critiques” was one of four major themes in the 100 most cited PWQ articles at the time of their analysis over a decade ago.
A second notable finding in the present analysis is related to the content and connectivity of the other two large clusters in the citation network, Clusters 2 and 5. Each of these clusters had cohesive within-cluster citation interconnectivity but was more peripheral to the central clusters in the network. Cluster 2 reflected publications on women's body image and mental health, often grounded in Fredrickson and Roberts’ (1997) objectification theory and McKinley and Hyde's (1996) objectified body consciousness framework. Cluster 2 included five of the 10 most cited publications within the PWQ network, including these two most cited publications. Cluster 5 reflected publications on rape and sexual assault, including Koss's (1985) pivotal article on the “hidden rape victim” which was also among the top 10 cited articles in the PWQ network. These two clusters (Clusters 2 and 5) parallel Rutherford and Yoder's (2011) finding that “violence against women” and “women's bodies and sexualities” comprised two of the four themes in the 100 most cited PWQ articles in their analysis. However, the present results also illustrate how citation network analysis can reveal patterns in how publications are used that might be invisible in content-based analyses.
Specifically, the present analysis demonstrates that the various clusters that could constitute the topic “violence against women” in a content-based analysis actually had limited citation connectivity in the PWQ citation network. That is, Cluster 6, which focused on power in close relationships, including intimate partner violence and Cluster 7, which focused on sexual harassment and workplace discrimination, were minimally connected with each other or with the cluster on rape and sexual assault (Cluster 5) and the cluster on sexual objectification (Cluster 2). Such citation silos are not unique to PWQ or feminist psychology. Academic scholars are expected to generate a research program which often means developing expertise in a focused domain. This expertise can manifest as familiarity with a narrow body of scholarship and citation habits that reflect that narrow scope. However, feminist analysis encourages resisting such boundaries. Citation silos can be problematic when scholars fail to capitalize on existing relevant knowledge across domains or disciplines (e.g., similarities across sexual objectification, sexual harassment, sexual violence in contexts, perpetrators, and victim responses). Moreover, citation silos can be antithetical to feminist analysis when they impede connecting and analyzing systems of power, such as patriarchy, as foundational across domains. Indeed, key feminist theoretical advancements connect sexism, sexual objectification, sexual harassment, and sexual violence on a continuum of dehumanization and violence that reflects and reinforces patriarchal power structures (e.g., Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997; hooks, 2000; Kelly, 1987; McKinley & Hyde, 1996). The distance and limited citation connectivity across these clusters in the PWQ citation network reveal an opportunity for integrating these knowledge bases and advancing pantheoretical feminist frameworks and analysis that connect these domains.
For example, scholarship on rape and sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and sexual harassment could be connected by drawing from theory and research across these domains on perpetrators, victim responses and supports, and interventions. Authors, reviewers, and editors can ask how the work in each of these areas can be informed by theory and findings in the other areas. There is promise in a shared feminist theoretical and empirical grounding that crosses research on sexism, sexual objectification, sexual harassment, sexual violence, and intimate partner violence. To that end, hooks’ (2000) concept of patriarchal violence conceptualizes intimate partner violence as “connected to sexism and sexist thinking, to male domination” (p. 62). Kelly's (1987) concept of the continuum of sexual violence highlights that “all women experience sexual violence at some point in their lives” and links “more common everyday abuses” with “less common experiences labelled as crimes” (p. 59). Experimental research connects objectifying a woman with aggressive behavior toward that woman in a lab setting (e.g., Vasquez et al., 2018). Survey research yields positive correlations among sexist attitudes, perpetrating sexual objectification of women, and perpetrating sexual violence (e.g., Gervais et al., 2018; Riemer et al., 2022). There is rich potential in bridging citation silos and connecting knowledge bases to advance feminist analysis across scholarship on sexism, sexual objectification, sexual harassment, sexual violence, and intimate partner violence.
Third, the present results yielded multiple small and temporally circumscribed clusters that were disconnected from larger clusters in the citation network. In some cases, these might reflect discontinued lines of research. In other cases, these clusters appear to have evolved into contemporary works responsive to calls for a feminist psychology. For example, the historical work on exceptional women (Cluster 9) echoes a theme in early psychology of women that Crawford and Marecek (1989) cautioned about, calling for research that moves beyond individualistic explanations for exceptional women's success to identifying structural factors that support some women's success and impede others. Consistent with this caution, the cluster on exceptional women is succeeded by continuing scholarship that connects gender and educational and occupational experiences with intersectional analysis (Cluster 4). This evolution aligns with Crawford and Marecek's (1989) call to expand research on exceptional women to capture a broader range of women's experiences and offer a feminist analysis of structures of power.
Some of the other circumscribed clusters may reflect the emergence of an increasing number of specialized journals as potential outlets for publications in those domains. For example, journals focused on sexual orientation and gender diversity (e.g., Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity launched in 2013 and LGBT Health launched in 2014) have emerged in the past decade as additional outlets for publications focused on same-sex relationships and sexual minority women (Cluster 10). However, PWQ remains a distinctively prominent outlet for explicitly feminist analysis in these domains; authors, reviewers, and editors can promote PWQ as such. Indeed, these and other circumscribed clusters also suggest areas for pursuing fruitful feminist cross-domain scholarship connecting feminist theories and research on sexual objectification (Cluster 2) with feminist research on sexuality (Cluster 10), aging (Cluster 11), reproductive rights and justice (Cluster 13), and menstruation (Cluster 16). For example, scholars can advance such work by evaluating the explanatory potential of objectification theory beyond typically researched criterion variables (e.g., disordered eating) and populations (e.g., White heterosexual young women) and inform further theory refinements.
Similarly, escalating legal and legislative attacks on reproductive justice and health, including abortion, are likely to spur a surge of scholarly interest in this domain. Feminist analysis of sexism and feminist consciousness (Cluster 1), sexual objectification (Cluster 2), and power and violence (Clusters 5, 6, 7, 8), are paramount in research on reproductive justice. PWQ can be a key venue for such work; authors, reviewers, and editors can use the present findings to inform research on reproductive justice with relevant PWQ citation domains that emerged in the present analysis. PWQ's role in advancing explicitly feminist scholarship is particularly important considering Eagly et al.'s (2012) findings that publications on the psychology of sex differences, gender, and women proliferated over time, but nearly 97% were not explicitly feminist. Each of the small clusters and citation connectivity gaps in the PWQ network is an opportunity for realizing the transformative visions that Crawford and Marecek (1989) and Fine (1985) offered for applying feminist theory and research in domains of real-life consequence for women (e.g., continuum of patriarchal violence, sexuality, aging, and reproductive justice) and for advancing knowledge on how gender manifests as power and operates with other axes of power, such as age, class, race, and sexuality, in each of these domains of women's lives.
Finally, our analysis of the journals citing PWQ articles reveals the growing influence of PWQ. Across the decades of analysis, PWQ articles were cited in an increasing number and breadth of journals. Overall, PWQ articles were cited in over 4,000 outlets, and the number of outlets in which PWQ articles were cited increased nine-fold from the first to the last decade of analysis. The breadth of outlets also increased dramatically. Specifically, in the first decade of analysis (1976–1990), 30% of citations to PWQ appeared in 5 journals, 2 of which focused on women and gender. By contrast, in the most recent decade of analysis (2011–2021), 30% of citations to PWQ appeared in 34 journals that reflected a wide range of foci, including feminist or gender-specific journals as well as journals spanning across personality and social psychology, counseling and applied psychology, violence, body image, sex and sexuality, health, and multidisciplinary open access journals. Importantly, this pattern should be interpreted within the broader increase in the number of scholarly journals over time, including the proliferation of specialized journals in specific domains (e.g., violence). A useful question for future research is whether the increase in journals overall, and specialized journals, in particular, has increased the concentration or dispersion of citations to feminist and other social justice-oriented scholarship. For example, are citations to feminist and social justice-oriented journals increasing or decreasing over time in psychology journals with other foci? A separate but parallel question is whether the publication of feminist and social justice articles is concentrated in feminist and social justice journals or increasing across journals of various foci over time.
The analysis of citations to PWQ also revealed that key journals in gender, sexuality, and women's studies were not among the top PWQ citing journals (e.g., citations to PWQ over the full duration of analysis for Gender & Society: 78; Feminist Studies: 6; Signs: 27; Women's Studies International Forum: 93). This may reflect journals’ different disciplinary emphases (e.g., Gender & Society's grounding in Sociology) or cross-disciplinarity spanning the arts, humanities, social sciences, and other disciplines with varying citation practices and pipelines (e.g., Feminist Studies, Signs, Women's Studies International Forum). Nevertheless, the present findings suggest working to increase PWQ articles’ visibility and access for authors in gender, sexuality, and women's studies and putting psychology of women in closer conversation with cross-disciplinary feminist scholarship.
Limitations and Boundaries of Analysis
The present findings should be interpreted in the context of the study's analytic limitations and boundaries. For example, the selection of a resolution is a key analytic decision. We made our resolution decision based on iterative analysis of multiple options and balancing cluster distinctiveness and interpretability. Higher or lower resolutions would result in fewer or more clusters. Similarly, given our focus on the PWQ citation network, the results and conclusions do not reflect the full body of psychological scholarship on women and gender or feminist psychology. Expanding the focus of analysis to citation networks across journals in feminist psychology, psychology of women and gender, or women's studies would yield different informative pictures of citation network landscapes. Similarly, citation network analyses of specific key domains such as violence against women that emerged in the present analysis or in prior conceptual analyses (e.g., Eagly et al., 2012; Rutherford & Yoder, 2011) would yield additional information about how citation patterns have evolved and shaped specific domains of scholarship over time.
In addition, it is important to reiterate that the aim of citation network analysis is to interpret citation patterns; it does not probe content or methodology. Accordingly, the present findings map the connections of PWQ publications based on how they use or cite one another. This focus on how publications are used in terms of citations yields complementary but distinct conclusions from traditional content-based analyses. A limitation of this scope of analysis is that citation patterns do not reveal why publications are cited. For example, a publication could be cited for its findings, as underpinning to theory or design, or as an example of problematic scholarship. In addition, older articles are more likely to emerge as top cited articles simply as a function of the longer time over which they could be cited. Regardless of these reasons, high citation scores and citation interconnectivity are a useful point of analysis as they suggest the influence of publications in PWQ. Moreover, patterns of citation connectivity provide valuable distinct information to content-based analyses. An example is a theme of “violence against women” in Rutherford and Yoder's (2011) content-based analysis juxtaposed against the present findings of citation disconnection among the clusters that would constitute this theme (e.g., Cluster 5 on rape and sexual assault, Cluster 6 on intimate partner violence). While citation network analysis does not tell us why these “violence against women” clusters are not more connected, it does reveal the disconnection and point to the need for more intentional scholarly engagement across these domains.
Implications and Future Directions
Building on the present analysis, follow-up studies can use this study's findings to conduct content analyses of articles in select citation clusters to probe why articles are being cited and how disconnected domains could be connected. For example, such follow-up content analyses can explore the areas of citation disconnection identified in the present study and delineate pantheoretical frameworks (e.g., Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997; hooks, 2000; Kelly, 1987; McKinley & Hyde, 1996) and avenues for fruitfully connecting these domains of scholarship (e.g., Cluster 2 on sexual objectification, Cluster 5 on rape and sexual assault, Cluster 6 on power and violence in close relationships, and Cluster 7 on sexual harassment and workplace discrimination).
Indeed, the patterns of citation cluster connection–disconnection and the citation scores found in the present study have implications for doing feminist scholarship and academic training. Citation practices are political and consequential. They are a mechanism for crediting labor. They are a principal method in which certain knowledge and knowledge producers are codified and amplified over others in academia (e.g., Cite Black Women, n.d.). Thus, resisting citation cluster silos and redressing the areas of citation disconnection identified in the present study serve as a feminist practice of crediting more feminist scholars and feminist scholarship. In addition to enriching the substance of scholarship, such intentional connectivity-promoting citation practices credit and promote the broad range of feminist knowledge and knowledge producers relevant to one's research areas. Moreover, crossing citation silos to connect domains such as sexual objectification, sexual harassment, and sexual violence can facilitate naming and analyzing the underlying systems of power (e.g., patriarchal violence; hooks, 2000) that are connected and foundational across these domains.
Similarly, the results of the present analysis reveal opportunities for enacting an intersectional feminist psychology, not only in content, but in citation practice. For example, a review of the top-cited articles in each cluster and across the clusters demonstrates the dominance of theory, measurement, and research articles about “women.” General discussions of “women” often center implicit prototypes of white, heterosexual, and middle- and upper-class women (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008). Recognizing citation practices as an exercise of power (e.g., Cite Black Women, n.d.) suggests intentionally citing theory and research specifically with women of color, sexual minority women, transwomen, and other minoritized groups to avoid reifying this implicit prototype in feminist psychology. Such research can be cited routinely as part of the literature review, method, and discussion sections of articles about “women” rather than cited only when the “women” of focus are the specific minoritized groups. Authors and editors can ensure that “general” theories take this scholarship into account. Mentors can teach students how citation practices generate who and what constitutes “foundational” scholarship. The next citation network analysis of PWQ could yield clusters that center analysis of power along class, race, and sexuality together with gender. These clusters could be populated with top-cited articles that decenter the implicit prototype of “women,” center Black women, queer women, poor women, transwomen and other minoritized groups and reflect how age, class, race, sexuality, and other axes of power manifest in women's lives.
Conclusion
The present study offers a map of PWQ articles’ citation network over time. Results reveal that PWQ's citation network clusters echo key elements of its historical and contemporary scope and that temporal connections between key clusters are concordant with calls for feminist psychology to ground theory and methods in women's lived experiences. In addition, areas of citation disconnection reveal avenues for resisting citation silos and drawing from and advancing pantheoretical feminist frameworks on the continuum of patriarchal violence (e.g., hooks, 2000). Small and discontinued citation clusters are areas ripe for feminist revisiting and advancement (e.g., reproductive justice and health). Results also show the growing influence of PWQ, with PWQ articles cited in an increasing number and breadth of journals across the decades of analysis. These findings can inform authors, reviewers, and editors to make intentional and evidence-based decisions in advancing the next decades of scholarship in PWQ in ways that resist citation silos, revive research on critical domains of women's lived experiences and foster the feminist edge of our scholarship in and outside of PWQ.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
