Page 174 - Cultures and Organizations

150 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

men’s MAS values becomes smaller, and at around age forty-five it has
closed completely. This is the age at which a woman’s role as a potential
child-bearer has generally ended; there is no more biological reason for her
values to differ from a man’s (except that men can still beget).

This development fits the observation that young men and women
foster more technical interests (which could be considered masculine), and
older men and women foster more social interests. In terms of values (but
not necessarily in terms of energy and vitality), older persons are more
suitable as people managers and younger persons as technical managers.

Masculinity and Femininity According
to Occupation

In the IBM research, occupations could (on the basis of the values of those
who were engaged in them) be ordered along a tough-tender dimension. It
did make sense to call some occupations more masculine and others more
feminine. It was no surprise that the masculine occupations were mostly

filled by men, and the feminine occupations mostly by women. However,
the differences in values were not caused by the gender of the occupants.
Men in feminine occupations held more feminine values than women in
masculine occupations.
The ordering of occupations in IBM from most masculine to most
feminine was as follows:

1. Sales representatives
2. Engineers and scientists
3. Technicians and skilled craftspeople
4. Managers of all categories
5. Semiskilled and unskilled workers

6. Offi ce workers

Sales representatives were paid on commission, in a strongly competitive
climate. Scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled workers focused
mostly on technical performance. Managers dealt with both technical
and human problems, in roles with both assertive and nurturing elements.
Unskilled and semiskilled workers had no strong achievements to boast
of but usually worked in cooperative teams. Offi ce workers also were less
oriented toward achievements and more toward human contacts with insid-
ers and outsiders.