Page 209 - Cultures and Organizations

He, She, and (S)he 185

women or men. For the last category, in which human contact is the core of
the task, feminine values are even superior. Tasks related with achievement
can more easily be automated than nurturing tasks. In balance, techno-
logical developments are also likely to support a shift from masculine to
feminine values in industrial societies.
For the poorer part of the world, as long as a country remains poor, it
is unlikely to shift toward more feminine values. Masculinity- femininity
differences play a role in what is becoming a dramatic problem for mainly
Asian countries, the prevention or suppression of female births. Asia around
2000 counted some 100 million fewer females than would have been the
result of normal birthrates. This fact is attributable to the desire of parents
to have sons rather than daughters, the availability of ultrasound scanning
of the sex of a fetus followed by selective abortion, and the old practice
of killing baby girls. The female/male ratio in the population is higher
in feminine cultures such as Thailand and Indonesia than in masculine
cultures such as India and China. A surplus of men over women may fur-
ther increase the masculinity of the societies in question. In the book Bare
Branches, political scientists Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer show
that a surplus of young men in society is associated with more violence and
94
with authoritarian political systems. The direction of causality between
male surpluses and cultural masculinity could go both ways, and they may
reinforce each other.
Conservation of the global environment demands a worldwide nur-
turing mentality. The vicious circle from poverty to masculinity and back
is bad for global survival. This is another good reason to strive for a fair
distribution of resources over the world’s population.