Gendered self-views across 62 countries: A test of competing models
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Social Psychological and Personality Science
Publisher
Sage
School
School of Arts and Humanities
RAS ID
54148
Funders
National Science Centre in Poland (Grant No. 2017/26/M/HS6/00360)
National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health ((Grant RL5GM118963)
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain (Grant RTI2018-093550-B-I00)
Czech Science Foundation (Grant 20-01214S)
Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences (Grant RVO: 68081740)
Economic and Social Research Council (Grant ES/S00274X/1)
European Research Council (Grant ERC-2016-COG 725128)
Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare (Grant 2017-0041)
University of Brasilia (DPI / DIRPE n. 04/2019)
Abstract
Social role theory posits that binary gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in less egalitarian countries, reflecting these countries’ more pronounced sex-based power divisions. Conversely, evolutionary and self-construal theorists suggest that gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in more egalitarian countries, reflecting the greater autonomy support and flexible self-construction processes present in these countries. Using data from 62 countries (N = 28,640), we examine binary gender gaps in agentic and communal self-views as a function of country-level objective gender equality (the Global Gender Gap Index) and subjective distributions of social power (the Power Distance Index). Findings show that in more egalitarian countries, gender gaps in agency are smaller and gender gaps in communality are larger. These patterns are driven primarily by cross-country differences in men’s self-views and by the Power Distance Index (PDI) more robustly than the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI). We consider possible causes and implications of these findings.
DOI
10.1177/19485506221129687
Access Rights
subscription content
Comments
Kosakowska-Berezecka, N., Bosson, J. K., Jurek, P., Besta, T., Olech, M., Vandello, J. A., ... & van der Noll, J. (2022). Gendered self-views across 62 countries: A test of competing models. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 14(7), 808–824.
https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221129687