What do feminists believe?

When a woman says "I am a feminist" what does she mean? What do other peopl e think she means? We asked 71 women to complete the Feminist Perspectives Scale (Henley, Meng, O'Brien, McCarthy, & Sockloskie, 1998) from their own perspective and from the perspective of a "typical feminist". Women who sel f-identified as feminists had stronger beliefs than those who did not on al l feminist perspectives except cultural feminism. Both groups believed that a typical feminist held stronger radical, socialist, and cultural feminist beliefs than they themselves did, although the discrepancies were greater for nonfeminists. Nonfeminists viewed a typical feminist as endorsing stron ger cultural feminist views than did feminists. Our results indicate that f eminist self-identity is related to endorsement of feminist ideologies, and that both, feminists and nonfeminists think that a typical feminist is mor e extreme than they are. The results also suggest that cultural feminism is a contested ideology; it is not endorsed by feminists, but is ascribed to them by nonfeminists.