Page 201 - Cultures and Organizations

He, She, and (S)he 177

ized faster than those with masculine ones; this applied across the board,
including in the United States.
The Christian Gospel offers a choice of values for different positions
on the masculinity-femininity scale. The New Testament carefully bal-
ances the importance of the relationships with God and with one’s fellow
humans. In one story Jesus is approached by a Pharisee with the question,
“What is the greatest command in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “You must love the Lord your God with your whole heart,
with your whole soul, and with your whole mind. This is the greatest and
chief command. There is a second like it: you must love your neighbor as your-
self. The whole Law and the prophets hang upon these two commands.” 77
The comparison between Christian religiosity in more masculine and
more feminine countries implies that the balance between these two com-

mands is difficult to find. There are cultural necessities that lead Christians

in some countries to stress the first and lead Christians in other countries

to stress the second.
One could argue that it is obvious that among Christian countries
the tough, masculine societies endorse more strongly the importance of
God—and other values derived from it. The Christian God is the Father:
He is masculine. The importance of God as rated by the respondents to the
European Values Survey and the masculinity index from the IBM studies
were both correlated with the claimed observance of the Ten Command-
ments, but they most strongly correlated with the purely religious com-
mandments (no other God, not abusing God’s name, and honoring the
Sabbath). Masculinity was less correlated with the claimed observance of
the sexual commandments (no adultery, do not desire thy neighbor’s wife)
and least with the claimed observance of the moral commandments (hon-
oring parents, no killing, no stealing, no false witnesses, do not desire thy
neighbor’s belongings). What was predominantly stressed in masculine

cultures was the emotional and symbolic meaning of God’s name. The
78
name of God the Father appeals strongly to the population of a masculine
society—including the women who were socialized to inequality of gender
values. In a feminine society, the stress is more on the importance of relat-
ion ships with fellow humans than with God.
Secularization in feminine countries does not imply a loss of civil
morality. A comparison of 1981–82 with 1990 European/World Values