Do “Womanist” Identity Attitudes Influence College Women's Self‐Esteem and Perceptions of Environmental Bias?

Helms (1990) proposed a four‐stage model of womanist identity in which she hypothesized that development of healthy identity in women involves movement from external standards of gender identity to internal standards. Attitudes derived from her model were used to predict undergraduate women's self‐esteem and perceptions of sex bias in the campus environment. Female undergraduates (N = 659), freshmen through seniors, were surveyed in classes at a large eastern university. Results indicated that Encounter (characterized by questioning of previously held stereotypical views about gender and dawning awareness of alternative perspectives) and Immersion‐Emersion (characterized by an active rejection of male supremacist values and beliefs and the search for a positive self‐affirming definition of womanhood) attitudes were inversely related to perceptions of environmental gender bias and positively related to self‐esteem. Implications for counseling and future research are discussed.