Traditional Femininity Versus Strong Black Women Ideologies and Stress Among Black Women

The construct of femininity has typically been conceptualized from a Eurocentric perspective as traditional femininity ideology (TFI). This hegemonic femininity construction might not be fully applicable to African American women given their unique history and experiences. Moreover, the strong Black woman ideology (SBWI) which, although formulated during slavery, has become an adaptive and idealized cultural idealization. Both constructs have been associated with stress. The current study sought to investigate the relative strength of the links between TFI versus SBWI and perceived stress among a sample of African American women, and whether these relationships were moderated by feminine gender role stress and racial stress. Participants were 292 African American women recruited via social media and students from a Midwestern university for a web-based survey. As hypothesized, SBWI accounted for unique variance in perceived stress; however, TFI did not explain any of the variance. Results also indicated that gender role stress approached significance in its moderation of the link between TFI and perceived stress, although racial stress did significantly moderate the relationship between SBWI and perceived stress