by The more gender equal a society is, the more similar men and women will be, adopting more similar interests, personality traits and behavioral patterns. Or so many people seem to believe.
Statements like these may sound like nonsense, but science shows that the reality may be more complex.
Some studies have found that some psychological sex differences, such as those in personality, are greater in countries that are more gender balanced. The same applies to countries that are more educated, more successful and have better living conditions. This is known as the gender equality paradox.
Until recently, it was not clear how widespread this pattern could be. My team, which included research assistant Kare Hedebrant, tried to address that in a recently published study, where we investigated the psychological sex differences related to living conditions and, if so, how.
The study covered a range of topics, from personality and cognitive functions to sexting and circadian rhythm. Our study focused mostly on western countries but used some data from other countries such as India and Kenya.
We reviewed 54 articles that analyze the relationship between the magnitude of psychological sex differences and indicators of living conditions at the country level. We also used data from 27 meta-analyses (reviews of previous research) on psychological sex differences and conducted new analyzes to determine associations between sex differences and the national economy, education, health, gender equality and more.
Sex differences
Each study used data from at least five countries, usually spanning several years.
We grouped the many psychological aspects covered by these studies into six categories: personal characteristics, cognition, interpersonal relationships, emotion, academic preferences (such as attraction towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and morality and values.
Our results present a complex picture, showing that the variation of gender psychological diversity did not follow a uniform pattern. In countries with better living conditions, males and females are more similar in some ways and more different in others.
For example, differences in personality traits were often found to be greater in countries with better living conditions. This includes traits such as extroversion, agreeableness and altruism, which research seems to show are more strongly associated with women. The same was true for sex differences in some dimensions of emotion, particularly negative emotions in which females tend to score higher, such as shame.
There were also exceptions to the paradox of gender equality. Sex differences in sexual behaviour, such as casual sex, were consistently found to be smaller in countries with better living conditions. This is probably because women in these countries, where norms are more permissive, have better access to contraceptives.
A complex phenomenon
Regarding cognitive functions, sex differences were sometimes larger, sometimes smaller in countries with better living conditions. Interestingly, the gender differences were greater in cognitive areas where women have strengths.
For example, episodic memory (remembering experienced events) and verbal ability, where women tend to do better than men, saw larger sex differences as living conditions improved. Women improved episodic memory when they had better living conditions. In contrast, sex differences in semantic memory (remembering facts) and mathematical ability, where men tend to do better, decreased when living conditions improved.
This suggests that, in terms of cognitive abilities, females benefit more than males from improvements in living conditions. The performance gap widens in domains where females have an advantage and closes in domains where males dominate.
Not all psychological sex differences were related to living conditions in the same way. So, can we say that there is a paradox of gender equality? Yes, to some extent, since sex differences have increased more, rather than decreased, in countries with better living conditions.
In most cases, however, psychological sex difference sizes were not significantly related to living conditions. This suggests that, in general, living conditions do not significantly affect psychological sex differences but rather appear to be relatively stable. For example, research often finds that women get higher grades in school across various subjects. It is also common for researchers to find that males are more interested in mathematics. But neither of them seems to be affected by living conditions.
Even in cases where there were variations in the magnitude of sex differences in living conditions, the pattern of male and female advantages generally remained the same. So, for example, although women have a greater advantage in episodic memory capacity over men in some countries than others, in almost all countries females are better than males.
In summary, we found little support for the idea that psychological gender differences disappear as societies develop. Policy makers probably cannot count on that if they hope to achieve equal distributions between men and women in different occupations. Instead, the greatest feature of sexual psychological differences appears to be their robustness to social change.
This article from The Conversation is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Agneta Herlitz receives funding from the Swedish Research Council.
