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.Electronic Journal: To print this article select pages 34-40. TOC

Eighty-eight male and female counselors viewed videotaped vignettes of two 35-year old women and two 20-year old women who portrayed problems about feared rape, existential anxiety, choice of a college major in social work, or choice of a college major in engineering. Results indicated that the two personal-social problems were rated as more serious than the vocational problems on all dependent measures. Additionally, the feared-rape problem was considered the most serious and needing the most counseling sessions, whereas the women with existential anxiety received the most empathy and were perceived as being most able to profit from counseling. The two vocational problems did not differ on any of the dependent variables. Further results indicated effects for both client age and counselor sex, depending on the particular problem.

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