Psychology

The purpose of this study was to examine a possible relationship between the superwoman ideal and feminist identity development. The results yielded a statistically significant inverse relationship in both stages one and three of feminist identity development and the superwoman ideal.

In other words, the more the participants identified with the passive acceptance stage of feminism, the less likely they were to conform to the superwoman ideal. In stage three of the model, women that fell into the category of embeddedness or emanation were also less likely to conform to the superwoman ideal.

According to Canadian Health&Care Mall research center http://www.canadianhealthmall.com, Since active feminism is captured in stage five of the model (active commitment), we can assume that there is no direct relationship between the feminist and the superwoman. However, all correlations were relatively weak correlations despite reaching clinical significance.

In an effort to explore the findings further, factorial analyses were conducted on the Stage one and Stage three of the FIDS to determine more information about the stages. Items that were significant at the .01 level from the FIDS Stage one include: “ I don’t think there is any need for an equal rights amendment, women are doing well; I don’t see much point in questioning the general expectation that men should be masculine and women should be feminine; I’ve never really worried or thought about what it means to be a woman in this society; I do not want to have equal status with men”.

Overall, the qualities of these items appeared to have a common theme of sexism, which are the qualities that contributed to the inverse relationship to the superwoman ideal. According to the findings, sexist ideals do not seem to be related to achieving perfection-particularly in masculine domains. This fits with the research on the superwoman that these women want to have it all, which is not a traditional gender role schema.

In stage three of the FIDS, (embeddedness-emanation), there was one prominent factor that emerged. The factor that was significantly related to the superwoman ideal was conceptualized as social immersion. The following items were significant at the .01 level: “I just feel like I need to be around women who share my point of view right now;

My social life is mainly with women these days, but there are a few men I wouldn’t mind having a nonsexual friendship with; I share most of my social time with a few close women friends who share my feminist values”. According to these results, the more frequently women relate and connect to other women, the lower the adherence to the superwoman ideal. Women who are more socially isolated may feel more pressure to have it all as defined by the superwoman construct. This may be an area to explore further to increase social support among women to reduce the pressures they feel.

As this is the first study to examine the relationship between feminist identity and the superwoman ideal, future research should look to expand these findings. A limitation of this study was that the overall age of the sample was around twenty-one years old.

It is possible that many women at this age are focused mainly on school and their career as opposed to being the perfect mother and wife. For this reason, future research should examine an older population of women that are more established in their careers and settled in their family life in order to see if the findings are further supported with an older sample.

Previous studies have indicated that the superwoman ideal has been linked to eating disorder behavior. Moving forward with research, additional studies should examine other factors that may contribute to adherence to the superwoman ideal or relationships between factors.

Currently, no studies have looked at the possible relationship between selfinjury and the superwoman ideal, which would expand the research on disordered eating to other self-harming behaviors. According to Fleming and Englar-Carlson (2008) self-injurious behavior affects a significant group of people, with as many as two and four million people engaging in self-injurious behavior each year.

This study has demonstrated that there may be some intervention or protective feature to feminism for young women feeling the pressure to “have it all”. Social immersion or social support from other women could possibly serve as a protective factor for women facing pressured by society.

Further research with a larger sample may help to expand these findings and define their utility in educating women about balance and choosing what they want to have instead of needing to have it all.