Recent studies on those who label themselves as feminists and non-feminists have become a popular topic of research. Past research has found that many women hold feminist values, but don’t label themselves as feminists. Those who identify as feminists have been found to have higher levels of well-being than those who do not identify as a feminist (Zucker & Bay-Cheng, 2010). Other benefits have been found such as empowerment, resilience against sexism, and improved body-image (Zucker & Bay-Cheng, 2010). Yet, many women continue to not identify with labeling themselves as feminists (Fitz, Zucker, & Bay-Cheng, 2012). In the current study, we examined the phenomenon of “I’m a feminist, but…” through the relationship between feminists, non-labelers, and non-feminists. Specifically, we analyzed how they differ on feminist identity attitudes via the Feminist Identity Composite Scale consisting of five attitudes: passive acceptance, revelation, embeddedness-emanation, synthesis, and active commitment (FIC; Fischer et al., 2000). We collected usable date from 337 female undergraduate students from two universities. They were asked to indicate agreement with core feminist beliefs (Zucker, 2004), indicate whether they identified as a feminist, and complete a survey regarding feminist identity questions. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was ran to test the multiple dependent variables. Preliminary results indicate a significant difference among non-labelers, feminists, and non-feminists. This suggests that researchers and practitioners in psychology should consider non-labelers to be a unique group of women separate from clear feminists and non-feministshttps://openriver.winona.edu/urc2019/1027/thumbnail.jp
