Cross- cultural Communication This page intentionally left blank

Masculinity and femininity index
This dimension examines gender roles in a society and concentrates on soci-
ological aspects rather than biological aspects. It measures the importance 
a culture places on material wealth as opposed to the quality of life. Once 
again, Hofstede uses a bipolar scale and scores countries out of 100. Societies 
can be classified as to whether they try to maximize or minimize the social 
gender role divisions. On the masculine end of the scale, the dominant 
values in a society are success, ambition, money, recognition of achievement, 
decisiveness and performance, and the male is expected to take the 

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Key Thinkers in Cross- Cultural Communication (1) 35
dominant role. If we are working in a masculine environment, we would 
expect our bosses to be assertive and decisive. Ideas such as equity, competi-
tion and performance are considered important. The roles men and women 
play in society are seen as being distinct from each other.
At the feminine end of the scale, the dominant values are nurturing and 
caring, the importance of relationships, the concern for the quality of life, 
job satisfaction and support for the disadvantaged and the weak in society. 
Women will also tend to have greater concern for environmental and 
human values in the workplace. Cooperation and a search for consensus 
are considered important values in such a society. People generally work in 
order to live, whereas in masculine societies, people tend to live in order to 
work. In countries which score low on masculinity, such as the Scandinavian 
countries, cooperation and quality of life are highly valued.
In a ‘feminine’ society, men and women are expected to take the same 
social roles. In the workplace, men and women may assume similar roles, 
but men are not expected to be overly ambitious or competitive, whereas 
women put more emphasis on the quality of life rather than material suc-
cess. Such societies tend to resolve conflict by dialogue. In a ‘masculine’ 
society, roles are more rigidly divided. According to Hofstede’s analysis, 
Japan emerged as the most masculine society (score: 95), followed by 
German- speaking, North American and Anglophone countries. The most 
feminine societies are the Nordic countries, the Netherlands (score: 14), 
some Latin American countries, Portugal and France.
In management terms, the masculinity index clearly reflects the role of 
women in management and their position in the management hierarchy in 
relation to men. However, it also reflects the attitude of the country in rela-
tion to quality of working conditions, the management of relationships at 
work and concern about the environment.
Some examples of scores on this dimension are as follows.
Japan
95
Germany
66
France
43
Austria
79
USA
62
Russia
36
Venezuela
73
India
56
Finland
26
Italy
70
Arab countries
53
Denmark
16
Switzerland
70
Canada
52
Netherlands
14
UK
66
Brazil
49
Sweden
5
Figure 2.7 Selected masculinity and femininity scores (Hofstede, Hofstede and 
Minkov, 2010: 141–3, Table 5.1)
Example
The male managers of an Arabian Gulf organization, while showing 
immense social courtesy, consistently tried to ignore their Dutch female 

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36 Cross-Cultural Communication
Hofstede has expanded his research to include the degree of masculinity 
and femininity according to occupation, family influence, gender roles, edu-
cation, shopping, working environment and the effect of religion.