ABSTRACT

The 2002 report of the United Nations Development Programme clearly demonstrates that women have a subordinate group status everywhere in the world. The present study investigated the impact of this status on the self-esteem of French women exposed to social comparisons and showed that unfavourable comparisons could have a positive impact on self-esteem when women compared with members of their own group. French women were indeed able to assimilate their self-evaluation to the positive performance of their ingroup peers. The potentially beneficial role of women's ingroup comparisons is discussed in a social psychology approach.

KEYWORDS: Assimilation, French women, Group status, Ingroup identification, Social comparison, Self-esteem