Balancing Multicultural Competence With Social Justice

Abstract

To identify a multivariate configuration of feminist beliefs best associated with optimal psychological functioning, 215 mostly White college women completed an online survey measuring their feminist beliefs (Feminist Perspectives Scale, Attitudes toward Feminism and the Women's Movement, sense of common fate, and Feminist Identity Composite) and 13 measures of well-being with liberation, encompassing individual (e.g., well-being), interpersonal (e.g., egalitarianism), and societal (e.g., collective esteem) levels of analysis. A canonical correlation analysis revealed a significant multivariate association and yielded three distinct functions: established feminism (the strongest, most positive predictor) and its opposite (antifeminism), awakening feminism (negatively linked to individual well-being), and nonfeminist but woman-identified traditionalism (with some compromised wellbeing). The configuration of feminist beliefs that a woman holds, does not hold, and rejects makes a difference for her psychological functioning as Major ArticleThe Division 17 logo denotes that this article is designated as a CE article. To purchase the CE Test, please visit www.apa.org/ed/ce. at WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY on April 9, 2015 tcp.sagepub.com Downloaded from

The Feminist Identity Composite

“…For instance, Revelation, Embeddedness/Emanation, and Active Commitment were associated with more positive attitudes toward feminism and greater endorsement of the tenets of liberal, cultural, radical, socialist, Women of Color, and lesbian feminist ideologies; Synthesis was positively associated with cultural feminism; and Passive Acceptance was negatively related to several types of feminist ideologies and positive attitudes toward feminism. With regard to personality-related variables, FIC subscale scores have been related to optimism (Peterson et al, 2008), autonomy (Yoder, Snell, & Tobias, 2012), and racial acceptance and awareness of White privilege (Wolff & Munley, 2012) in the expected directions, among predominately heterosexual (or sexual orientation not reported) undergraduate women. Furthermore, FIC subscale scores have been found to be related to multiple psychological distress variables (e.g., negative affect, depression, phobic anxiety, body image concerns; Blue & Berkel, 2010;Clarke, Murnen, & Smolak, 2010;Fischer & Good, 2004;Murnen & Smolak, 2008;Sabik & Tylka, 2006) and indicators of wellbeing (e.g., self-esteem, self-efficacy, personal growth, selfacceptance, personal agency, self-empowerment; Peterson et al, 2008;Yakushko, 2007;Yoder et al, 2012), in anticipated ways with samples of predominately heterosexual (or sexual orientation not reported) undergraduate women.…”

Perceived Sexist Events and Psychological Distress of Sexual Minority Women of Color

“…Counselors can encourage sexual minority WOC clients to seek out personal and professional groups that may provide valuable support. Support seeking has been identified as a means of ''psychological resistance to oppression'' (Williams, 2005, p. 281) and feeling a sense of connection with other women has been found to promote personal empowerment (Yoder et al, 2012). Counselors should have resources (e.g., group names and contact information) readily available to facilitate this process.…”

“…Counselors should be vigilant about monitoring, exploring, and processing the impact of developing greater social consciousness on the client. For instance, Yoder et al (2012) suggested that a greater awareness of the broad objectives of gender equity could be related to feelings of anger and uncertainty about one's ability to act as a change agent.…”

Reliability and Validity of Feminist Identity Composite in Chinese Women

“…These results seem to indicate that such controversial issues need to be clarified by researchers when assessing people's feminist beliefs. Second, the relationships between the FIC subscales also yielded a distinctive pattern from that found in previous studies (Fischer et al, 2000;Yoder et al, 2012;DeBlaere et al, 2017). For example, the negative relationship between EE and PA exhibited in previous studies was not found among Chinese women.…”