Date of Award

1997

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Similar to minority groups, women often possess inferiority feelings about themselves and have difficulty developing a positive view of womanhood. Womanist Identity Development is the stage-wise process by which women develop womanist attitudes, forming a positive gender identity. The stages are associated with specific attitudes about womanhood, including external negative definitions (i.e. societal stereotypes) and positive internal definitions. The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not womanist identity attitudes vary according to age and whether or not attitudes are related to views of women's roles and life experiences. The sample consisted of fifty-two participants ages 20 to 25 years, and fifty-two participants ages 40 to 45. Participants completed three self-report instruments: (1) the Womanist Identity Attitudes Scale; (2) the Attitudes Towards Women Scale; and (3) the Life Experiences Checklist. The null hypotheses were tested by one-way analyses of variance, a Pearson Product correlation, and multiple regression analysis. Results suggested that membership in an age category provided no significant differences in womanist identity attitude subscale scores. The results also indicated a significant relationship between Encounter Womanist Identity Subscale scores and Attitudes Towards Women Scale (views of women's roles) scores. Finally, the results suggested that certain life experiences were significantly related to womanist identity attitudes. The implications of the current study are that college age and mid-life women hold similar attitudes about their gender (womanist identity attitudes); liberal views of women's roles are most prevalent during the Encounter stage of womanist identity, and life experiences play a role in the formation of attitudes about gender (womanist identity attitudes).

Download

Share

COinS