Gendered self-views across 62 countries: a test of competing models
, Ammirati, S., Anderson, J., Anjum, G., Ariyanto, A., Aruta, print., Ashraf, M., Bakaitytė, A., Becker, M., Bertolli, C., Bërxulli, D., Best, D. L., Bi, C., Block, K., Boehnke, M., Bongiorno, R., Bosak, J., Casini, A., Chen, Q., Chi, P., Cubela Adoric, V., Daalmans, S., de Lemus, S., Dhakal, S., Dvorianchikov, N., Egami, S., Etchezahar, E., Esteves, C. S., Froehlich, L., Garcia-Sanchez, E., Gavreliuc, A., Gavreliuc, D., Gomez, Á., Guizzo, F., Graf, S., Greijdanus, H., Grigoryan, A., Grzymała-Moszczyńska, J., Guerch, K., Gustafsson Sendén, M., Hale, M. L., Hämer, H., Hirai, M., Hoang Duc, L., Hřebíčková, M., Hutchings, P. B., Jensen, D. H., Karabati, S., Kelmendi, K., Kengyel, G., Khachatryan, N., Ghazzawi, R., Kinahan, M., Kirby, T. A., Kovacs, M., Kozlowski, D., Krivoshchekov, V., Kryś, K., Kulich, C., Kurosawa, T., Lac An, N. T., Labarthe-Carrara, J., Lauri, M. A., Latu, I., Lawal, A. M., Li, J., Lindner, J., Lindqvist, A., Maitner, A. T., Makarova, E., Makashvili, A., Malayeri, S., Malik, S., Mancini, T., Manzi, C., Mari, S., Martiny, S. E., Mayer, C. H., Mihić, V., MiloševićĐorđević, J., Moreno-Bella, E., Moscatelli, S., Moynihan, A. B., Muller, D., Narhetali, E., Neto, F., Noels, K. A., Nyúl, B., O’Connor, E. C., Ochoa, D. P., Ohno, S., Olanrewaju Adebayo, S., Osborne, R., Pacilli, M. G., Palacio, J., Patnaik, S., Pavlopoulos, V., de León, P. P., Piterová, I., Porto, J. B., Puzio, A., Pyrkosz-Pacyna, J., Rentería Pérez, E., Renström, E., Rousseaux, T., Ryan, M. K., Safdar, S., Sainz, M., Salvati, M., Samekin, A., Schindler, S., Sevincer, A. T., Seydi, M., Shepherd, D., Sherbaji, S., Schmader, T., Simão, C., Sobhie, R., Sobiecki, J., De Souza, L., Sarter, E., Sulejmanović, D., Sullivan, K. E., Tatsumi, M., Tavitian-Elmadjian, L., Thakur, S. J., Thi Mong Chi, Q., Torre, B., Torres, A., Torres, C. V., Türkoğlu, B., Ungaretti, J., Valshtein, T., Van Laar, C., van der Noll, J., Vasiutynskyi, V., Vauclair, C. M., Vohra, N., Walentynowicz, M., Ward, C., Włodarczyk, A., Yang, Y., Yzerbyt, V., Zanello, V., Zapata-Calvente, A. L., Zawisza, M., Žukauskienė, R. & Żadkowska, M.
(2023).
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
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.