Nature vs. Culture:
A cross-national analysis of feminine culture and economic performance
Jean-Claude Usunier
A very profound divide, perhaps the most significant cultural difference, is the
difference between femininity and masculinity, that is, cultural values derived from
archetypal gender roles (Mead, 1948). Irrespective of their actual nature people tend to
behave in more masculine (feminine) ways in some societies (MF according to
Hofstede, 1998). Why should masculinity positively influence economic performance?
According to a number of authors (see contributions in Hofstede, 1998), masculinity is
characterized by more assertiveness and ego boosting, with the consequence that
masculine cultures favor individual performance orientation, and va lue careerminded people. Stereotypically, masculine cultures believe in social darwinism where
underperforming people and underdogs are put aside. This is in line with a competitive
orientation, whereby personal outcomes of self- interested individuals will always be
preferred rather than joint social outcomes. As a consequence, masculinity tends to
hinder cooperation; this does not mean that cooperation per se is impossible: more
likely, strategic masculine players faced with any kind of situation that resembles a
prisoner’s dilemma game, will be tempted to escape because it may provide them with
larger individual outcomes than cooperation for both parties. They will also hesitate to
cooperate if their expectation is that the other player, who also belongs to the same
masculine culture will tend to defect. A weakness of masculine cultures is therefore
that cooperation tends not to be fostered and promoted by the prevailing cultural
values. Why should femininity positively influence economic performance? In
stereotypically feminine cultures, caring for others is important: it is assumed that
weaker members of society should be protected. There is a stronger sense of
responsibility towards others than in masculine cultures. Since people are less selfcentered, and more altruistic, collaboration is viewed as a less risky behavior than in
masculine cultures, despite the risk of being taken advantage of. The collaborative
orientation in feminine cultures is more natural because the joint outcome tends to be
preferred over one’s own share of the pie; at least, it is assumed that the global social
outcome (that is, joint payoffs for bilateral cooperative choices in a prisoner’s dilemma
game ) has to be taken into account. In this sense, the concept of paretooptimality is
linked to feminine rather than to masculine culture. The weakness in feminine culture
is due to a potential excess of other-regarding, unselfish behavior, where the player
tends to be overly and naively altruistic, with low aspirations for one’s own outcomes.
1
Negotiation research has shown that lower individual aspirations lead to lower joint
outcomes (Pruitt and Lewis, 1975). Practised on both sides, cultures being composed
of interacting individuals who share the same values, feminine culture may lead to low
motivation for economic achievements.
As a consequence of these compensatory influences, both competition and cooperation
being necessary for economic performance (EP), in both feminine and masculine
cultures, we expect that feminine (respectively masculine, since they are opposed on a
continuum) culture should have no direct influence on aggregate economic
performance (H1).
Nature versus culture: some elements for a debate about gender and economic
performance
Women have been heavily involved in their own efforts towards emancipation over the
last century at least in a number of societies (i.e. in ex-communist countries as well as
in developed, industrial economies) by recognizing their political, economical, as well
as human rights with the consequence that participation of women in society has
increased over the last 60 years. The whole political debate about women’s
participation throughout this period has centered around formal rights, numbers, and
quotas. However, a key issue is whether women have brought “their values” with
themselves when reaching more influential positions in society (in government, civil
service, education, corporate world). This is a complex issue: gender is both about
nature and culture. Two provocative questions help illustrate a debate that has never
been instigated: 1/ have more men adopted feminine values as a consequence of
increased female participation? 2/ When men endorse feminine values, do they have
the same chances of being promoted as if they had adopted the prevailing masculine
values? Has the input of feminine culture increased in the realm of organizational life
as a consequence of increased female participation? To sum up: Have legal and social
evolutions automatically produced cultural change?
The issue of cultural change is particularly relevant especially in terms of how and to
what extent women and men share common values. Within a given feminine society
feminine values tend to be propagated to both women and men. Conversely women in
masculine societies tend to endorse attitudes and behaviors that are consistent with
masculine values. As a consequence, it is not at all obvious that feminine culture
increases with an increasing participation of women in economic and social life. We
can assume the possibility of a discrepancy between increased female participation and
feminine culture. Let us assume that women only reach higher positions when they in
some way or another endorse masculine attitudes and behaviors, especially
competitive orientation and assertiveness which are needed for being chosen over and
against others, males included.
“Masculinization” is the case when women have a very limited place in a particular
society (i.e. it is traditionally male dominant and this dominance is entrenched in local
2
mores and legal systems), and the local culture is masculine (prototype: most Arab
countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia with MF score at 53). “Conflicting
dominance” occurs when the same type of traditionaly male dominant society
combines with a relatively high level of femininity in the local culture; there are a
number of such examples, particularly Iran (a feminine country with a score of 43),
Indonesia (MF score = 46) or East African countries.
Male dominance seems deeply associated with the traditional and conservative
orientation of most collectivistic countries. We have regressed a number of indicators
of male dominance on the individualism/collectivism (IC) scale. The IC scale ranges
from 6 (Guatemela, the lowest individualism, consequently the most collectivistic
country according to Hofstede, 2001) to 91 (the United States, the most individualist
country in the world). Collectivism is negatively correlated with the Human
Development Index 2001 (p<.000, 63 countries), with female activity rate as a
percentage of male rate for ages 15 and above (p<.002, 63 countries), with female
employment in services (p<.018, 56 countries). Collectivism is associated with less
female professional and technical workers (p<.068, 50 countries), and a lower ratio of
estimated female to male earned income (coefficient of .6, p<.000, 48 countries ) but
positively correlated with female employment in agriculture (p<.011, 51 countries).
Collectivism is also associated on average with less seats in parliament (p<.000, 61
countries), more recent the parliamentary decision to grant women the right to vote
(p<.008, 61 countries), and it is negatively correlated with the Gender Empowerment
measure (p<.000, 48 countries). Additionally, collectivism is positively correlated with
the total fertility rate (p<.001, 63 countries) and with the mortality rate under the age
of five (p<.005, 62 countries).
However, we expect more complex logics to explain the link beween EP (economic
performance) and MF. Masculinity / feminity may work in association with other
cultural values, especially individualism/collectivism for reasons exposed above. This
suggests that MF may influence EP both in isolation and as an interaction effect.
We expect many women have been obliged to adopt masculine values in organizations
in order to be promoted; conversely, those who do not adopt masculine values, and this
more than for simple lip service have reduced chances of being promoted (i.e. the
“masculine parity”. We may hypothesize that increased participation of talented
women results in increased economic performance in societies with more masculine
and individualist values. More precisely the more a society scores high on both
individualism and masculinity (interaction term between both cultural dimensions), the
higher its economic performance (H2). Conversely, when collectivism is associated
with femininity in a particular country (as in the model of “conflicting dominance”),
its economic performance will significantly decrease .
Our key issue is whether women remain faithful to and continue to put into practice «
their » values once they reach more influential positions in society (i.e. in government,
education, the corporate world, etc.). Said differently, does women’s increased
participation lead to the feminization of cultures ? An empirical test of such an
3
hypothesis would typically require a diachronic design in which we should be able to
sketch both “natural” and “cultural” data over a long period of time. Unfortunately, we
have no longitudinal data available (time series) that could represent the cultural
phenomenon of « feminization » or « masculinization » of cultures. This is impossible
to verify as we have no time series but only cross-sectional data as concerns feminine
culture. A longitudinal analysis (based on time series data per country) would probably
confirm that GDP/capita has risen with increased female participation in the
workforce: the human capital base has been massively broadened by adding female
talent. In fact, GDP/capita is positively correlated with female activity rate as a
percentage of male rate for ages 15 and above (p<.003, 79 countries).
In the absence of such longitudinal data for cultural variables, cross-sectional data
(contrasting countries with masculine and feminine cultures at comparable time
periods) offers a proxy view of the phenomenon, although with some caveats as it
substitutes temporal variance for spatial variance. It is however, an important
shortcoming in this research, which only provides an indirect answer to the very
significant issue of feminization for managers as well as organizations.
In fact, there are societies, which are relatively balanced in terms of masculine and
feminine culture, that is, their MF score is near the world average, showing that the
overall tendency is very slightly masculine or very slightly feminine. We assume that
in such societies neither pole is strongly privileged in societal values, and the
necessary coexistence and compromises between collaboration and competitive spirit
will be achieved more easily. On the contrary, if a society is highly feminine or highly
masculine, there will be some sort of loss of balance that may be conducive, ceteris
paribus, to lower EP (H3). To sum up, we expect masculinity as a whole to be
significantly negatively related to EP when the positive effect of interaction with
individualism on EP and the positive effect of MF balance are taken into account.
Discussion and implications
The distribution of roles between the sexes is another fundamental issue for any
society to which a range of solutions are found. The analysis of the IBM data revealed
that (a) women's values differ less among societies than men's values; (b) if we restrict
ourselves to men's values (which vary more from one country toanother), we find that
they contain a dimension from very assertive and competitive and maximally different
from women's values on the one side, the modest and caring and similar to women's
values as the other. We have called the assertive pole "masculine" and the modest,
caring pole "feminine". The women in the femininecountries have the same modest,
caring values as the men; in the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and
competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap between
men's values and women's values.
Feminine culture limits the negative sides of masculine competitiveness, ego boosting,
and not caring for others. It is a natural process of considering dependence on others as
4
well as one’s own interests which is a key issue in negotiation (Pruitt, 1981; Pruitt and
Lewis, 1975), a requisite for non- hierarchical conflict resolution in both
organizational life and interpersonalrelationships. If we consider the economic process
of resource allocation as a macrobargaining game where people and groups of
individuals negotiate how resources should be allocated, then MF should have some
sort of meta-influence on economic performance. It should lead partners belonging to
feminine cultures to more integrative solutions while more competitive views of
interactions should be observed in masculine cultures.
In Hofstede's operationalization, femininity and masculinity are seen as opposite polar
positions on a linear continuum. What if they were two different dimensions rather
than a bipolar dimension? Hofstede (1998) explains that the two scale Bem Sex Role
Inventory (BSRI) questionnaire partitioned subjects in four groups (Bem, 1974),
masculine only, feminine only, androgynous subjects who scored high on both
masculine and feminine items and undifferentiated people who scored low on both
masculine and femine items. Hofstede argues further that the BSRI was designed as an
instrument dealing with individual level measurement while the masculinity/feminity
dimension results from an ecological analysis, at the country level. “At the level of
country means, ‘more people with feminine values’ is statistically so strongly
correlated with ‘fewer people with feminine values’ that this becomes one single
dimension.” (Hofstede, 1998, page 19) Our empirical approach is based on a large
cross-sectional sample of countries, limited by the availability of cultural scores for
only 64 countries.
It is quite representative of the world’s cultures: most important nations are included in
the sample with the notable exception of China. However, Hong Kong, Taiwan and
Singapore are reasonable proxies for the Chinese culture. One of the key findings is
that masculine culture per se is detrimental to economic performance. However, it
appears to have a double and contradictory influence because of its positive influence
when combined with individualism in an interaction term. There is strong positive
dynamics in masculine values, based on self- interest, competitive spirit and high
motivation for self-centered achievements. However, it is like a two-sided coin:
masculine culture has advantages and drawbacks, most of them being related to the
relative lack of concern for others that may reduce the level of trust necessary for
managing joint activities and undermine cooperative behaviors.
As we have argued earlier in this paper, « natural » rather than « cultural » avenues
have been adopted to increase the place of women in society. While this evolution is
globally positive for economic performance, the route followed is that of masculine
parity (figure 1) where women reach higher positions through a combination of formal
equality (at the society level) and adoption of masculine values (at the individual
level). Nevertheless, taking into account that masculine culture per se is detrimental to
economic performance, we may overlook the issue of promoting more feminine
cultures in organizations in order to achieve a better qualitative balance between
cooperation and competition.
5