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Gender differences in self-views are relative and context-dependent and the culture itself offers a powerful context for shaping the self (c.f. Oyserman, Kemmelmeier & Coon, 2002; Vignoles, Becker, Smith, Easterbrook, Brown, et al., 2015). Although there is cross-cultural evidence that attributing agency to men and communality to women tends to be universal (Williams & Best, 1990) there are also cultural differences in women’s and men’s agentic and communal self-views. That is, there are cultural differences in the extent to which women and men internalize prevalent gender stereotypes into their self-concept. In our study we focus on 1) universality of gender differences on agentic and communality self-views and 2) two potential country level predictors of these gender differences: country’s gender equality and Power Distance levels. Given the cross-cultural universality of gender stereotypes that portray women as more communal than men, and men as more communal than women, we hypothesize that women will generally rate themselves higher on communality than men, and men will generally rate themselves higher on agency than women. People derive their self-views, in part, by internalizing qualities associated with social groups to which they belong (Tobin et al., 2010 ; Turner et al., 1987). Thus, women and men should, on average, have self-views on gender-relevant dimensions that are consistent with universal stereotypes . Up-to-date cross-cultural data suggest that gender differences on major personality dimensions are paradoxically larger in countries higher in gender equality (referred to as the Gender-Equality-Personality Paradox (GEPP); Connolly et al., 2019; Stoet & Geary, 2018) . Although this research did not examine gender differences in communal and agentic self-views, the GEPP raises an important question: Are gender differences in gendered self-views larger, or smaller, in more gender egalitarian countries? Countries ranked high in gender equality indexes are overall more egalitarian and lower power distance (PD) countries. Thus, apart from a country’s gender equality, a country’s PD might serve as another potential predictor of the magnitude of gender differences in self-views. Guimond et al. (2007) - basing their work on social comparison and self-categorization theories (Guimond et al., 2007; Guimond, 2008; Guimond, Chatard, & Kang, 2010) - suggested that different social comparison processes across cultures produce diverse patterns of gender differences in the self. People acquire self-knowledge by comparing themselves to “relevant” others, but the relevance of certain social comparison partners will differ according to a country’s PD. In high PD (and low gender equality) cultures, people are unlikely to acquire self-knowledge by comparing themselves to members of the other gender group, because such social comparisons would be viewed as inappropriate. In contrast, in low PD (and high gender equality) countries, intergender social comparisons are more appropriate and occur more frequently. As a result, we might expect to find larger gender differences on gendered self-views in low PD countries, because women and men in these countries acquire self-views through social comparison to both same- and other-gender people (rather than only same-gender people), thereby exaggerating the gender differences. In our study we will examine the universality of gender differences in agentic and communal self-views, and how these differ along two cultural variables: gender equality as measured with Global Gender Gap Report (GGGI), and PD as measured by Hofstede, using a multi-nation sample of 62 countries.

Binary prescriptive and proscriptive gender stereotypes (i.e., gender rules) describe how women and men should or should not be (Prentice & Carranza, 2002). According to precarious manhood theory (Vandello & Bosson, 2013), men should face stricter gender rules than women (Koenig, 2018). That is, men are expected to display agency (male prescription) and avoid weakness (male proscription) more strongly than women are expected to display communality (female prescription) and avoid dominance (female proscription). This study examines (target and participant) sex differences in binary gender rules in 62 nations. We examine: (1) whether people endorse gender rules more strongly for men than women (target differences); (2) whether target differences in gender rules differ by participant gender (that is, whether male and female participants display different patterns of target gender rules); (3) whether patterns of target and participant differences in gender rules are larger in countries lower in gender equality, which typically have stricter sex-based labor divisions and more rigid expectations that men will uphold traditional male gender role norms; and (4) whether target and participant differences in gender rules covary with other nation-level variables (wealth, human development, precarious manhood beliefs, LGBT rights) and individual-level variables (precarious manhood beliefs, awareness of gender inequality).

this is a sub-project of DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/FQD4P and is focused on a subset of the data as explained in the documentation here

Precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action. Here, we present cross-cultural data on a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs (the Precarious Manhood Beliefs scale [PMB]) that covaries meaningfully with other cross-culturally validated gender ideologies and with country-level indices of gender equality and human development. Using data from university samples in 62 countries across 13 world regions (N = 33,417), we demonstrate: (1) the psychometric isomorphism of the PMB (i.e., its comparability in meaning and statistical properties across the individual and country levels); (2) the PMB’s distinctness from, and associations with, ambivalent sexism and ambivalence toward men; and (3) associations of the PMB with nation-level gender equality and human development. Findings are discussed in terms of their statistical and theoretical implications for understanding widely-held beliefs about the precariousness of the male gender role.