The Relationship of Women's Sex-Role Identity to Self-Esteem and Ego Development

Abstract

The present study examined the relationship of women's sex-role identity to self-esteem and ego development. One hundred fifty-three female undergraduate students at the University of Maryland were the volunteer Ss for this study. During class time these persons completed the Index of Adjustment and Values, used to measure self-esteem, and the Sentence Completion Test, ussed to measure ego development. From this pool of Ss four sex-role identity groups were determined: androgynous women, feminine women, masculine women, and undifferentiated women. Twenty-five from each group were randomly selected to comprise a final sample of 100 women. Results of the self-esteem analyses supported previous findings that androgynous women possess a higher degree of self-esteem than stereotypically feminine women and undifferentiated women, but revealed no significant difference in self-esteem between androgynous and masculine women. In contrast, the level of ego development of androgynous women was not significantly different from that of feminine and undifferentiated women but was significantly higher than that of masculine women. Overall results support the theory that a combination of masculine and feminine characteristics is beneficial for women in terms of both self-esteem and ego development.