Counseling the Contemporary Woman. Suzanne Degges-White
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religion and spiritual orientation, ethnic and racial identity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, indigenous heritage, national origin, and gender. Within these cultural dimensions, there are a variety of issues and experiences that must be considered in conjunction with gender. It is helpful to understand some contextual issues specific to women across multiple aspects of cultural diversity, while highlighting relationality and overlap across cultural domains. While each domain of the model could be its own chapter, this chapter introduces intersectionality from a gendered framework using the ADDRESSING model as a guide. Instead of addressing gender separately, gender will be interwoven throughout each dimension of the model.
Age and Generational Influences
Generational influences heavily affect how women and girls understand gender roles, career possibilities, competence, attractiveness, and body image. Downing and Roush’s (1985) conceptual model of feminist identity development outlined the process of moving from passive acceptance of sexism and patriarchy to active commitment to dismantling sexism from a position of identity achievement, described as the often-unachieved apex of feminist identity. While not the final stage, the preceding stage of synthesis was described as the highest stage typically achieved. Each wave of feminism had its own distinct emphasis and societal perception, which strongly connects to women’s alignment with a feminist label. Research found that both feminist and nonfeminist women endorsed items corresponding to strength, independence, and identity as a woman, with younger women rarely identifying previous inconsistent views (Erchull et al., 2009). Erchull et al. (2009) concluded that the gains of the feminist movements may have shifted younger women’s perceptions of womanhood, suggesting that Downing and Roush’s (1985) synthesis stage may be a starting point, in contrast to previous generations. In addition to these generational influences, ageism, adultism, ableism, and sexism intertwine in a youth-oriented society that negatively frames women’s aging, while simultaneously dismissing the self-determination and agency of younger women. By connecting much of women’s value to their appearance and ability, negativity toward aging can engender dissatisfaction and feelings of inadequacy in women of all ages (Comstock, 2005; Dougherty, Dorr, & Pulice, 2016).
Developmental or Other Disability
Disabilities are typically conceptualized through two frameworks. The first, the biological or medical model, focuses primarily on “fixing” or managing medical aspects of disability. In this model, professionals primarily emphasize medical interventions and symptom management. Despite the medicalization of disability, women with disabilities show significant disparities in health-care access, reporting less access compared to women without disabilities and men with disabilities, according to the 2006 National Health Interview Survey (Smith, 2008). The second model, termed the social or sociopolitical model, frames disability from a minoritized group perspective and recognizes the societal barriers and challenges for people with disabilities. Without negating medical, physical, mental, psychological, developmental, or other factors in disability, the social model largely focuses on access and equitable treatment regarding attitudinal, physical, and communication barriers (Berens & Erford, 2018). The social model strongly aligns with a multicultural counseling approach in conceptualizing minoritized identities, oppression, and attitudinal and institutional barriers. Women with visible disabilities are often viewed as less attractive and less capable, perpetuating a “weaker sex” sexist narrative. This intertwined ableism and sexism exacerbates sexist stereotypes of women’s intelligence and competence and can create barriers in multiple life domains, particularly in vocational and career development (Noonan et al., 2004).
Religion and Spiritual Orientation
Religion and spirituality play an important role in culture and identity. A national survey (Pew Research Center, 2015a) indicates that 77 percent of participants identified religion as somewhat to very important in their lives. This is particularly relevant as gender roles and expectations are often shaped by religious doctrine and mores. This can include restricted gendered roles in religious service (e.g., nuns and priests) or day-to-day norms regarding male-dominated household structures and expectations of women’s modesty, sexuality, and reproductive decision making. Frame (2003) suggests that spirituality encompasses “values, beliefs, mission, awareness, subjectivity, experience, sense of purpose and direction, and a kind of striving toward something greater than oneself. It may or may not include a deity” (p. 3). In contrast, religion is more closely aligned with a more structured experience of spirituality, dogma, rituals, and communal expectations. Although frequently merged into a single category, religion and spirituality are distinct components of identity, which may or may not be congruent for different individuals. In a sample of low-income, rural women, Gill, Barrio Minton, and Myers (2010) found high correlations between spirituality and religiosity; combined, spirituality and religiosity accounted for nearly 40 percent of total variance in wellness. While some women may experience frustration with religion-based gender roles and expectations, others find a sense of purpose in them.
Ethnic and Racial Identity
Race and ethnicity heavily influence gender socialization, norms, and experiences (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). The invisibility of racial privilege for white women often results in limited recognition of the racialized experience of gender, reflecting a common critique of white feminism. It is from this position of white womanhood that McIntosh (1988) identified her privileged racial reality as a white woman with her simultaneous oppression as a woman. Gender roles and expectations can be influenced by multiple cultural factors, including interconnected race, ethnicity, and religion. For example, Marianismo, a Latinx cultural construct rooted in the Christian figure of the Virgin Mary, exemplifies cultural expectations associated with virtue, religiosity, self-sacrifice, and silencing the self (Caplan & Whittemore, 2013; Lara-Cinisomo, Wood, & Fujimoto, 2018). These cultural gender roles may be rigidly binary and androcentric in nature, which can also marginalize women within their own racial cultural community. These gender roles often set extremely high expectations for women of color to show strength, manage multiple roles through self-sacrifice, and serve as the nucleus of their families and communities (Abrams, Javier, Maxwell, Belgrave, & Nguyen, 2016; Abrams, Maxwell, Pope, & Belgrave, 2014). Similarly, Jones and Shorter-Gooden (2003) found that 40 percent of black/African American women downplayed their strengths and skills to accommodate black/African American men. A recent study identified gendered racial themes in Asian American women’s experience that differed from perceptions experienced by all Asians (Mukkamala, & Suyemoto, 2018). Abrams et al. (2016) argued that even with similarities among women of color, there is a need for culture-specific understanding of women’s experiences.
Socioeconomic Status
Social class and socioeconomic status are closely connected to gender in a variety of ways. Regardless of life choice across single, married/partnered, or divorced status, women navigate education, employment outside of the home, and caretaking differently than men. Women and children are significantly overrepresented in poverty statistics, with 31.6 percent of women-headed households below federal poverty level compared with 15.8 percent of male-headed households (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014). Women are also disproportionately impacted by divorce, contributing to the “feminization of poverty” as women are most frequently custodial parents, bearing the brunt of the caretaking and financial responsibility for children. Even for those in heterosexual, two-parent households, discrepancies appear in parent perspectives of responsibilities. A national survey found that fathers are more likely to view parenting responsibilities as equally shared, while mothers say they take on a larger role (Pew Research Center, 2015b). Women who choose to be mothers may experience challenges negotiating career advancement and gendered caretaking expectations of children and older relatives. In addition, women are frequently socialized into lower-paying occupations (e.g., nurses instead of physicians, teachers instead of administrators), despite surpassing men’s rates of bachelor’s degree completion by age 31 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018). Further, the absence of equal pay contributes to lower overall earnings for women compared to men. This