Women Derive Collective Self-Esteem from Their Feminist Identity

Women's self-esteem is more strongly related to social acceptance and inclusion than to accomplishments. We investigated the extent to which women derive self-esteem from being women, that is, from their membership in a collective gender group. We hypothesized and found that women's collective self-esteem (i.e., self-esteem derived from their gender group) would systematically vary for women showing differing degrees of feminist development. Thus, women's self-esteem derived from womanhood seems to depend on the “meaning” of womanhood to the individual woman.