Page 207 - Cultures and Organizations

He, She, and (S)he 183

word masculine to distinguish the German style from the French. At the
same time, he recognized that the Germans maintained greater equality
among customers. 86
Comparing Britain and the Netherlands, the English statesman Sir
Francis Walsingham wrote in a political pamphlet in 1585 that England
and the Low Countries “have been by common language resembled and
termed as man and wife.” Half a century later some Englishmen connected
Dutch commercial success with the fact that the Dutch “generally breed
their youth of both sexes more in the study of Geometry and Numbers than
the English do.” And elsewhere it was remarked that Dutch merchants and
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their wives were more conversant in trade than the English. Although
women in seventeenth-century Netherlands were excluded from public

office, “within these limits they managed to assert themselves, both indi-
vidually and collectively, in public life.” And in paintings from this period,
“fathers are occasionally shown participating in the work of caring for
small children.” Also, “Military glory . . . was liable to be regarded with
more circumspection than enthusiasm in the Netherlands. . . . Even though
professional soldiers . . . played a crucial role in the defense of the [Dutch]
Republic in the seventeenth century, they went conspicuously without
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honor in the patriotic culture of the time.” Military heroes belong to the
history of masculine countries such as Britain and the United States.
It is noteworthy that symbolic personalities representing Western
countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were gendered accord-
ing to their cultures’ masculinity or femininity: John Bull for Britain and
89
Uncle Sam for the United States but Marianne for France and the Dutch
maiden (called Frau Antje in Germany) for the Netherlands.
Latin American countries varied considerably on the masculinity-
femininity scale. Small Central American countries as well as Peru and
Chile scored feminine; Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador strongly

masculine. One speculative explanation is that these differences refl ect the
inheritance of the different Indian civilizations dominant prior to the Span-
ish conquest. Most of Mexico inherited the tough Aztec culture, but the
southern Mexican peninsula of Yucatan and the adjacent Central Ameri-
can republics inherited the less militant Maya culture. Peru and Northern
Chile inherited the Inca culture, resembl ing the Maya.
All these historical examples show that differences among countries on
the masculinity-femininity dimension were noticed and described centuries
ago: the way in which a country deals with gender roles is deeply rooted.