4.9 Masculinity vs. Femininity

The notion of masculinity and femininity are often misconstrued to be tied to their biological sex counterparts, female and male. For understanding culture, Hofstede et al. (2010) acknowledge that this distinction ultimately has a lot to do with work goals. On the masculine end of the spectrum, individuals tend to be focused on items like earnings, recognition, advancement, and challenges. Femininity, on the other hand, involves characteristics like having a good working relationship with one’s manager and coworkers, cooperating with people at work, and security (both job and familial). Hofstede et al. refer to this as being more relationally oriented. We can define both types of cultures in the following way (Hofstede et al., p. 140):

A society is called masculine when emotional gender roles are clearly distinct: men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and focused on material success, whereas women are supposed to be more modest, tender, and concerned with quality of life.

A society is called feminine when emotional gender roles overlap: both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with quality of life [emphasis in original].

The top five most masculine countries are Slovakia, Japan, Hungary, Austria, and Venezuela (the U.S. is number 19 out of 76); whereas feminine countries are represented by Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Netherlands, and Denmark.

This section is adapted from Cultural Characteristics and Communication in Interpersonal Communication Copyright © by Jason S. Wrench; Narissra M. Punyanunt-Carter; and Katherine S. Thweatt available at Interpersonal Communication – Simple Book Publishing licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.