Society - Knowledge - Discourses

Women and Parapsychology Revisited

In 1991, the Parapsychology Foundation organized an international conference on “Women and Parapsychology” in Dublin, Ireland. It dealt with questions of scientific careers, the publication of articles, the contributions and experiences of women in this field, the role of women in the history of parapsychology and feminist approaches in psi research.

30 years after this conference, we wanted to ask female researchers about their current experiences as women in the research field of parapsychology and anomalistics and obtain an assessment of the situation. To this end, we designed an online survey that collected data on scientific careers, the publication of articles, contributions to the field of parapsychology and anomalistics and specific gender-specific experiences.

Cover der "Zeitschrift für Anomalistik"

30 women completed the questionnaire. It was a selective, non-representative sample with a high average age (58.5 years, SD: 15.5 years) and level of education (73% have a Ph.D.). Due to these limitations, the survey did not provide complete clarity on whether parapsychology differs from other disciplines in terms of the status and situation of women. 53.3% of women respondents affirmed that they experience obstacles in their professional field due to their gender, while only 23.3% denied this. Some aspects are comparable with the situation of women in other research fields. As is generally the case in science, women tend to be paid less, they have to work harder to be taken seriously by their male colleagues, which can slow down their careers, and there are also career interruptions due to bringing up children, greater
difficulties in reconciling work and family life and the like.

We found a relatively small proportion (10%) of women who reported sexual intimidation or harassment in the field of parapsychology. The general funding problems in parapsychology are probably even greater for women due to additional child-rearing responsibilities and less institutionalized research.

Some findings lead to the thesis that it is not necessarily the gender aspect that is responsible for impolite and inappropriate behavior on the part of male colleagues, but rather a tendency for female researchers to be more open to world views and heterodox research topics outside the scientific mainstream. This thesis needs to be validated in further studies. As we collected qualitative data in addition to quantitative data, we were able to gain an informative picture despite the lack of comparative values from previous years or from other disciplines.

In addition to this online survey, a special issue supervised by guest editors Cedar S. Leverett and Nancy L. Zingrone was published. special issue of the Journal of Anomalistics dedicated to this topic, which was published in December 2022.

Furthermore, an online symposium Women and Parapsychology Revisited was organized and moderated by the Parapsychological Association.

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Mayer, G., Leverett, C. S., & Zingrone, N. L. (2022). Women and Parapsychology 2022 – An Online Survey. Journal of Anomalistics / Zeitschrift für Anomalistik, 22(2), 465-498. https://doi.org/10.23793/zfa.2022.465