Masculine vs. Feminine Culture: Another Layer of Culture - WITI (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between masculine and feminine cultures? ›

Masculine cultures value competitiveness, assertiveness, material success, ambition, and power. Female cultures place more value on relationships, quality of life and greater concern for marginalized groups (e.g., homeless, persons with disabilities, refugees).

This dimension looks at the extent to which a culture supports a traditional view of masculine and feminine traits. For these purposes, masculinity refers to traits associated with assertiveness and femininity refers to traits associated with nurture.

In some cultures, masculinity may be associated with traits such as strength, assertiveness, and independence, while femininity may be associated with traits such as sensitivity, nurturing, and compassion. In other cultures, these associations may be different or may not exist at all.

These are commonly referred to as Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory. This article will focus on the masculinity versus femininity dimension of culture, also known as MAS. Countries like the United States, Mexico, China, and Japan are all considered to be masculine.

Expert-Verified Answer. Feminine characteristics include being dainty, collaborative, soft-spoken, nurturing, caring, and compassionate. Masculine traits include being assertive, tough, powerful, a leader, in charge, and a risk-taker.

Money and achievement are important. Examples of masculinity cultures are Slovakia, Japan, Hungary, Austria, Venezuela. Femininity: Relationship oriented, more focus on quality of life. Examples of femininity culture are Sweden, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark.

It has been refined since. The original theory proposed four dimensions along which cultural values could be analyzed: individualism-collectivism; uncertainty avoidance; power distance (strength of social hierarchy) and masculinity-femininity (task-orientation versus person-orientation).

According to Hofstede, the five main dimensions are identity, power, gender, uncertainty, and time. You can think about cultural value dimensions on a scale or a continuum, where one aspect of the value lies on one side of the scale and the other extreme lies at the other end of the scale. Hofstede, G.

This article describes briefly the Hofstede model of six dimensions of national cultures: Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism/Collectivism, Masculinity/Femininity, Long/Short Term Orientation, and Indulgence/Restraint.

For example, girls and women are generally expected to dress in typically feminine ways and be polite, accommodating, and nurturing. Men are generally expected to be strong, aggressive, and bold. Every society, ethnic group, and culture has gender role expectations, but they can be very different from group to group.

How are masculinity and femininity represented? ›

Masculine images typically convey power, strength, virility, athleticism, and competitiveness whereas feminine images show beauty, submissiveness, nurturance, and cooperation.

According to Hofstede's cultural dimensions model Japan, China, Mexico, and much of Eastern Europe are all on the high end of masculine cultures. The United States is also considered a masculine culture, with a MAS score of 62.

In addition, masculine societies emphasize earnings and achievements, and employees tend to work very long hours and take very little vacation time. (Table 5) shows the masculine scores for selected societies. As the table shows, Anglo cultures such as the U.S. and Canada tend to have high masculinity.

In high Masculine societies, people are driven by competition and achievement. People tend to be assertive and focused on material success. Countries with high Masculinity national cultures are: Japan, Venezuela, Italy, Ireland and Mexico.

A low score (Feminine) on the dimension means that the dominant values in society are caring for others and quality of life. A Feminine society is one where quality of life is the sign of success and standing out from the crowd is not admirable. In a feminine culture, quality of life and people are essential.

Across cultures, the perceived value of masculinity varies greatly. In some cultures, such as Japan and the United States, masculinity is highly valued, associated with power, success, and dominance. In these cultures, men are expected to be assertive, competitive, and focused on material success.

The feminine includes all living beings of female sex (e.g. woman, girl, cow...) and diminutives; the masculine encompasses all other nouns (e.g. man, boy, pot, broom...).

If a noun refers to a male person it will be masculine, if it refers to a female person it will be feminine.