Page 178 - Cultures and Organizations

154 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

cultures, they were seen as equally important or unimportant by brides and
grooms alike. 20
In 1993 a Japanese market research agency, Wacoal, asked young
working women in eight Asian capital cities for their preferred charac-
teristics of husbands and of steady boyfriends. In the masculine cultures,
husbands should be healthy, wealthy, and understanding, while boyfriends
should exhibit personality, affection, intel ligence, and a sense of humor.
In the more feminine cultures, there was hardly any difference between
the preferred characteristics of husbands and of boyfriends. If we see the
boyfriend as the symbol of love and the husband as the symbol of family
life, this means that in the masculine countries, love and family life were
more often seen as separate, whereas in the feminine countries, they were
expected to coincide. In the feminine countries, the husband was the boy-
friend. A unique aspect of this analysis was that the comparison with the
IBM data was made exclusively across Asian countries, showing that the
masculinity-femininity dimension could also be validated without includ-
ing European countries. 21
U.S. anthropologist Margaret Mead once observed that in the United
States boys become less attractive sex partners by career failure, girls by
22
career success. In Japan a woman’s marriage chances diminish if she has
a career of her own.
Table 5.2 summarizes the key issues described so far on which mascu-
line and feminine societies tend to differ.

Masculinity and Femininity in
Gender Roles and Sex

The Wacoal survey also asked young working women in eight Asian cities

whether they thought certain characteristics applied to men, to women, or
to both. Answers differed between masculine and feminine countries. In
the more masculine countries, sense of responsibility, decisiveness, liveli-
ness, and ambitiousness were considered characteristics for men only, while
caring and gentleness were seen as for women only. In the more feminine
cultures, all these terms were considered as applying to both genders. 23
Whereas gender roles in the family strongly affect the values about
appropriate behavior for boys and for girls, they do not have immediate
implications for the distribution of gender roles in the wider society. As
argued earlier in this chapter, men, being on average taller and stronger