Gendered Self-Views Across 62 Countries: A Test of Competing Models
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Authors
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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Social Psychological and Personality Science |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| Pages (from-to) | 808-824 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| ISSN | 1948-5506 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 09.2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by a grant from the National Science Centre in Poland (Grant No. 2017/26/M/HS6/00360) awarded to Natasza Kosakowska-Berezecka. Data collection by the following researchers was supported by grants as follows: Emma C. O’Connor (Grant RL5GM118963 from National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health); Angel Gomez (Grant RTI2018-093550-B-I00 from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain); Sylvie Graf and Martina Hřebíčková (Grant 20-01214S from the Czech Science Foundation, and Grant RVO: 68081740 from the Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences); Teri A. Kirby (Grant ES/S00274X/1 from the Economic and Social Research Council); Soledad de Lemus (PID2019-111549GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033); Michelle K. Ryan and Renata Bongiorno (Grant ERC-2016-COG 725128 from the European Research Council awarded to Michelle K. Ryan); Marie Gustafsson Sendén, Anna Lindqvist, and Emma Renström (Grant 2017-00414 from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare); Claudio V. Torres (Grant DPI / DIRPE n. 04/2019 from the University of Brasilia).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
- agency, binary sex differences, communality, egalitarianism, gender equality, self-views
- Psychology