Gender Self‐Definition and Gender Self‐Acceptance in Women: Intersections With Feminist, Womanist, and Ethnic Identities

Over the past few decades, women's identity development has come to be recognized as a process that may differ from identity stage models developed from earlier studies in which only men participated. Researchers such as Conarton and Kreger-Silverman (1988), Gilligan (1982), Josselson (1987, 1994), Chodorow (1978), Downing and Roush (1985), among many others, have made important contributions to the understanding of women's identity as females. To a large extent, however, the quest to better conceptualize female identity has focused on White women, thereby perpetuating, albeit inadvertently, an unbalanced and exclusionary approach to identity research. Moreover, this approach tended to perpetuate a one-dimensional view of women as gendered beings but not as individuals who also possess an ethnic or racial identity that intersects with gender in a woman's total identity. The work of Ossana, Helms, and Leonard (1992) and Parks, Carter, and Gushue (1996) reflected some notable exceptions to this approach in that their research explored women's identity as Blacks and Whites; however, women of other ethnicities, such as Latina/Hispanic and Asian, have not been studied in this regard. In addition, two relatively new gender identity constructs, gender self-definition and gender self-acceptance (Hoffman, 1996; Hoffman, Borders, & Hattie, 2000), merit exploration both in relation to more recognized female identity constructs and to ethnic identity. Such exploration serves to broaden understanding of how women's gender identity constructs may connect to each other as well as to women's ethnic identity. This kind of exploration also provides a more integrated approach to women's identity research. Toward this goal, the primary purpose of this article was to present results of a study of ethnically diverse women that was designed to explore the relationships among selected gender identity constructs and between those constructs and ethnic identity. First, current relevant models related to female and ethnic identity and their corresponding instruments are presented and discussed. * Stage/Status Models: Feminist and Womanist Identity Two related but different models of women's identity development are the Feminist Identity Development Model (Downing & Roush, 1985) and the Womanist Identity Development Model (Ossana et al., 1992). Both are based on the concept that women's identity development is a progression through various stages or statuses over the life span. Each of these models is discussed briefly below. Feminist Identity Development Downing and Roush (1985) proposed a model of women's feminist identity development that is based largely on Cross's (1971) Black Identity Development Model. Both models reflect a progression through stages or statuses wherein one moves from (a) unawareness of inequity and discrimination through (b) experience of crises that force one to confront such inequities to (c) an immersion and identification with one's own group that provide opportunities for reflection and exploration to (d) integration of one's experiences around the area of oppression and a concomitant achievement of balance (i.e., able to evaluate people as individuals instead of only as group members) and, finally, to (e) a commitment to meaningful action toward eliminating the ism involved. Downing and Roush labeled the stages of their model Passive Acceptance, Revelation, Embeddedness Emanation, Synthesis, and Active Commitment, mirroring Cross's designations of Pre-Encounter, Encounter, Immersion-Emersion, Internalization, and Intemalization-Commitment. Noting concerns with Erikson's (1963) placement of identity as a precursor to intimacy, concerns that are widely acknowledged (Chodorow, 1978; Gilligan, 1982; Josselson, 1973; Marcia & Friedman, 1970; Williams, 1977), Downing and Roush instead saw their model as congruent with Kegan's (1982) developmental model and with Rebecca, Hefner, and Oleshansky's (1976) sex role transcendence theory. …