ABSTRACT
In the survey, personal authority surfaced as the model of power preferred by European-American women. This was evidenced not only in the responses to the personal authority statements, but also in the responses to those reciprocal empowerment statements which were drawn from the personal authority model. Only a few women indicated that, as women in US society, they practice personal authority. These women see a distinction between how women in general in US society use power and how they use power in their own culture. Traditional power attributes surfaced most frequently in the responses to questions concerning how power is currently used in the workplace. However, when it came to family, the responses included attributes that were fairly evenly spread across three power models: power, empowerment, and personal authority. The word decision making appears to relate to personal authority, while the cluster of terms status, connections, prestige, and title seems to relate to traditional power.
