Women’s Empowerment

Abstract

Equal opportunity and equal rights have long been important parts of this country's ideological heritage. Support for these ideals, however, was not widespread until the latter part of this century. The modern civil rights and women's movements emerged in the 1960s, along with the widespread resistance to the Vietnam war. During this same turbulent period community psychology was "officially born." The Division of Community Psychology was formally organized in 1965 at a conference in Swampscott, Massachusetts. According to Walsh (1987), "the clamor of oppressed U.S. citizens demanding full societal participation" was "a key aspect of the social context for the subdiscipline's founding" (p. 524)