Society–Knowledge–Discourse

Women and Parapsychology Revisited

In 1991, the Parapsychology Foundation organized an international conference on “Women and Parapsychology” in Dublin, Ireland. It addressed issues related to 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 to psi research.

Thirty 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"

Thirty 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 raising up children, greater
difficulties in balancing 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 suggest that gender it is not necessarily responsible for rude 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 requires further validation. Since we collected both quantitative and qualitative data in addition to quantitative data, we were able to obtain an informative picture despite the lack of comparable data from previous years or from other disciplines.

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

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

Flyer zur Veranstaltung
Project Team
Publications

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