Mindfulness and the Psychology of Oppression: Navigating Misogyny

This book offers a comprehensive, evidence-based, and engaging inquiry into women’s oppression and its mitigation through contemplative practices like meditation. It combines scholarly depth with embodied experiences and practices that interweaves individual, interpersonal, and public relationships.

Locating oppression as an internalized psychological response to toxic social messaging, the author distils research from multiple sources - cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, feminism, and Buddhist psychology - to consider how mindfulness might be deployed to help women navigate misogyny. The book draws on cross-cultural data from historical and contemporary sources, supplemented with accounts from the author’s own life to illustrate misogyny through cases ranging in severity from overt violence to covert micro-aggressions and gaslighting. Introducing new theories and insights on the role of emotions and consciousness in oppression, the author proposes an anti-oppressive mindfulness agenda to help women navigate misogyny and recover from the aftermath of oppression.

Mapping out a vision for how meditation might become a more effective path for women’s liberation and wellbeing, this book is an invaluable resource for educators, social workers, clinicians, and contemplative practitioners alike. It will also be highly relevant reading for students, educators, clinicians, and researchers of psychology, mindfulness, and gender studies.

Seonaigh MacPherson is a Professor of adult and higher education, with a specialization in diversity and mindfulness-based teaching and learning (MBTL) in the Faculty of Education, Community, and Human Development at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada.