Overview: research on the psychology of women. II. Women in families, work, and psychotherapy

In the first part of this overview the author reviewed research on gender differences in behavior and women's sexual and reproductive lives, and discussed the social and intellectual context of the recent knowledge explosion in women's studies. In this second part she reviews recent research on selected aspects of the social psychology of women's lives. Highlighted themes include women in relationship to family structure and child rearing, work and achievement motivation, and implications for the psychiatric treatment of women that can be drawn from the psychotherapy research literature. She briefly assesses the possible impact of research in these areas on psychiatric theory and practice.