A material containing spherical microvoids with a Hookean matrix response was shown to take the appearance usually applied in continuum damage mechanics. However, the commonly used variable damage was replaced with the void volume fraction , D f which has a clear physical meaning, and the elastic strain tensor with the damage-elastic g e strain tensor. The postulate of strain equivalence with the effective stress concept was g de reformulated and applied to a case where the response of the matrix obeys Hooke's law. In contrast to many other studies, in the derived relation between the effective stress tensor and the stress tensor , the tensor is symmetric. A uniaxial bar model σ σσ was introduce for clarifying the derived results. Other candidates for damage were demonstrated by studying the effect of carbide coarsening on creep rate.