Assuming you use python 2.x and have a list of unicode strings like this:
l=[u'hello',u'world']
then you may use the encode() method to turn them into normal strings like this:
print l[0].encode()
testing for words to be identical just means using the '==' operator, or if you wish to check if a word is part of a list of words use the 'in' keyword, so:
if (u'hello' in l): do-something
should work on the just defined list.
I hope this answers your question? If not, please try to give some more details of what you need.