In this groundbreaking First Edition, Mary Crawford presents a framework for understanding how the lives of all people are shaped by gender. Instead of presenting gender as a collection of individual traits, Transformations presents gender as a social system that is used to categorize people and is linked to power and status. The readable and lively style, combined with a balance of classical research studies and current theories, provide an engaging overview of the psychology of women.

Mary Crawford is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. She has taught the psychology of women and gender for twenty-five years, most of that time at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where she earned the Trustee’s Achievement Award for lifetime professional accomplishment. She has also held the Jane W. Irwin Chair in Women’s Studies at Hamilton College, served as Distinguished Visiting Teacher/Scholar at Trenton State College at The College of New Jersey, and directed the graduate program in women’s studies at the University of South Carolina. She received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Delaware. Professor Crawford is a consulting editor of Psychology of Women Quarterly, an associate editor of Feminism and Psychology, and a Fellow of both the American Psychological Society and the American Psychological Association. Mary Crawford has spoken and written about women’s studies issues for audiences as diverse as the British Psychological Society, Ms. Magazine, and the Oprah Winfrey show. Works she has authored or edited include: Gender and Thought: Psychological Perspectives (1989); Talking Difference: On Gender and Language (1995); Gender Differences and Human Cognition (1997); Coming Into Her Own: Education Successes in Girls and Women (1999) and a special double issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly (1999) on innovative methods for feminist research.