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Masculinity and Femininity: the taboo dimension of national cultures
GEERT HOFSTEDE (Ed.) 1998
London, Sage
xv + 238 pp.
L38.00/$59-95 hardback, L17.99/$27.95 paperback.
ISBN 0-7619-1028-X hardback, 0-7169-1029-8 paperback
Ever wondered why coffee filter machines are more popular in countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark and espresso machines in countries such as Italy, the USA and Britain? Taste? Fashion? No, apparently this is one way that `feminine' and `masculine' national cultures may be distinguished. In people-oriented `feminine' countries, where social relations and the home are given relatively high priority, ritualised and intensive coffee drinking contributes to (re)creating feelings of togetherness. In contrast, the fast espresso `fix' is associated with the results-oriented cultures of `masculine' countries that value competitiveness and high achievement. This is one example of the kind of argument advanced by Geert Hofstede in this new addition to Sage's Cross Cultural Research and Methodology series. This arises from Hofstede's lengthy engagement with cross-national differences within the fields of organisational psychology and cross-cultural management theory.
Hofstede argues that one of the dimensions along which differences in national cultures may be measured relates to how `feminine' or `masculine' they are. So although from its title this book purports to be about gender, I certainly do not think that all readers would agree that it actually is. In some ways the theoretical perspective adopted by the authors moves away from traditional, essentialist notions of gender. The distinction between masculinity and femininity is...