This research examined possible gender differences in the source and level of self-esteem of 99 male and 90 female undergraduates from mainland and China. There was little evidence of a gender difference in the level of overall self-esteem, but gender differences were evident in the subjects' ratings of the importance to their self-concept and their self-satisfaction with lower order facets of the self, indicating the necessity for using multidimensional measures of the self and for preserving the self-concept/self-esteem distinction.