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Who is a contemporary EQUAMAN – a supporter of gender equality movements? How do men understand gender equality in different cultural contexts? How do boys and men perceive their masculine gender roles? How are gender roles developed throughout adolescence? And how are gender equality and masculine gender roles related to men’s well-being and satisfaction with life? In this 3-year project, a team of interdisciplinary researchers including psychological and sociological scientists from Poland and Norway will focus on the important, though understudied, topic of men’s understanding of gender equality and relationships between masculine gender roles and well-being. More precisely, we will analyse 1) how gender roles and gender equality are related to boys’ and mens’ well-being, and 2) what makes men involved in gender equality movements. This is a novel approach to the topic of masculinity and well-being, and we want to investigate it through different perspectives using a variety of methods – focus group interviews, surveys, experimental studies and educational interventions conducted in schools and at universities. The data collection will take place in Poland and Norway - two countries strongly varying in their level of gender equality. Norway is one of the most gender equal nations in the world in terms of providing equal rights, opportunities, and resources for all genders, while Poland is among the least gender equal countries in the EU (EIGE, 2022). Our project will consist of four work packages focused on different aspects of masculinity: In Work Package 1, we will investigate the role masculinity plays in adolescence in different cultural contexts. More precisely, we will analyse the development of gender role identities in adolescents in Poland and Norway and investigate how it relates to young men’s well-being, satisfaction with life and risky behavior over time. In Work Package 2, we will examine the conditions under which men are willing to contribute to gender equality by taking different actions to support it. In Work Package 3, we will explore how different groups of men, varying in age, cultural origin, and socio-economic status, understand what it means to be a man and what gender equality is. We will also investigate challenges and barriers that might prevent men from becoming involved in gender equality movements. In Work Package 4, we will apply the knowledge gained from Work Packages 1-3 by developing educational interventions. They will be tested among adolescents and young adults, whether information- and science-based interventions can alter young men’s attitudes towards gender roles and gender equality. An important contribution from Work Package 4 will be an open-access manual for educational programs that can be used by professionals to educate young men about the role of gender equality and gender roles for men’s overall well-being. Combining and integrating different disciplines and perspectives in a cross-cultural approach allows us to get a better understanding of the complex ways that men’s gender roles relate to well-being and inequality, both globally and within societies. Our interdisciplinary, scientific team consists of expert investigators involved in four work packages. This carefully assembled team of researchers brings together a broad variety of expertise in different research fields and methods, and will thus allow not only for an innovative and truly interdisciplinary perspective on the topic, but it will also lead to an optimal realization of the project through joint publications in high-impact journals. Our results might furthermore be important in understanding mechanisms relating to gender equality around the world and can be beneficial for global, social change movements interested in increasing men’s and women’s well-being.

Gender differences in self-views are relative and context-dependent and the culture itself offers a powerful context for shaping the self (c.f. Oyserman, Kemmelmeier & Coon, 2002; Vignoles, Becker, Smith, Easterbrook, Brown, et al., 2015). Although there is cross-cultural evidence that attributing agency to men and communality to women tends to be universal (Williams & Best, 1990) there are also cultural differences in women’s and men’s agentic and communal self-views. That is, there are cultural differences in the extent to which women and men internalize prevalent gender stereotypes into their self-concept. In our study we focus on 1) universality of gender differences on agentic and communality self-views and 2) two potential country level predictors of these gender differences: country’s gender equality and Power Distance levels. Given the cross-cultural universality of gender stereotypes that portray women as more communal than men, and men as more communal than women, we hypothesize that women will generally rate themselves higher on communality than men, and men will generally rate themselves higher on agency than women. People derive their self-views, in part, by internalizing qualities associated with social groups to which they belong (Tobin et al., 2010 ; Turner et al., 1987). Thus, women and men should, on average, have self-views on gender-relevant dimensions that are consistent with universal stereotypes . Up-to-date cross-cultural data suggest that gender differences on major personality dimensions are paradoxically larger in countries higher in gender equality (referred to as the Gender-Equality-Personality Paradox (GEPP); Connolly et al., 2019; Stoet & Geary, 2018) . Although this research did not examine gender differences in communal and agentic self-views, the GEPP raises an important question: Are gender differences in gendered self-views larger, or smaller, in more gender egalitarian countries? Countries ranked high in gender equality indexes are overall more egalitarian and lower power distance (PD) countries. Thus, apart from a country’s gender equality, a country’s PD might serve as another potential predictor of the magnitude of gender differences in self-views. Guimond et al. (2007) - basing their work on social comparison and self-categorization theories (Guimond et al., 2007; Guimond, 2008; Guimond, Chatard, & Kang, 2010) - suggested that different social comparison processes across cultures produce diverse patterns of gender differences in the self. People acquire self-knowledge by comparing themselves to “relevant” others, but the relevance of certain social comparison partners will differ according to a country’s PD. In high PD (and low gender equality) cultures, people are unlikely to acquire self-knowledge by comparing themselves to members of the other gender group, because such social comparisons would be viewed as inappropriate. In contrast, in low PD (and high gender equality) countries, intergender social comparisons are more appropriate and occur more frequently. As a result, we might expect to find larger gender differences on gendered self-views in low PD countries, because women and men in these countries acquire self-views through social comparison to both same- and other-gender people (rather than only same-gender people), thereby exaggerating the gender differences. In our study we will examine the universality of gender differences in agentic and communal self-views, and how these differ along two cultural variables: gender equality as measured with Global Gender Gap Report (GGGI), and PD as measured by Hofstede, using a multi-nation sample of 62 countries.

Attitudes toward violence against women as well as rates of different forms of violence against women vary greatly by country. We propose that people's attitudes regarding violence against women are tied to their beliefs about gender and more specifically their beliefs about manhood. In cultures around the world, individuals believe that manhood is a precarious social status that is hard won and easily lost (Bosson et al., 2021). Endorsement of these beliefs among men leads them to assert their manhood when it is threatened. One compensatory action men engage in to reassert their manhood is through violence. We predict that the more a culture endorses the belief that manhood is a precarious social status, the more accepting it will be of violence against women and therefore the rates of violence against women will also be higher.

The project will provide a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between religiosity and ambivalent sexism. Ambivalent sexism is a concept that refers to the presence of both hostile and benevolent attitudes towards women, which can manifest in subtle or overt forms of gender discrimination and inequality. The project will use the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines to systematically identify and synthesize relevant studies from various databases and sources. The meta-analysis method is used to statistically analyze the data from the included studies, and to provide a summary effect size estimate of the relationship between religiosity and hostile and benevolent sexism. The project aims to answer several research questions, such as: What is the overall relationship between religiosity and ambivalent sexism? Does the relationship between religiosity and ambivalent sexism vary across different religious traditions and denominations? What are the possible models that accurately portray the relationship between religiosity and ambivalent sexism? The paper contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between religiosity and ambivalent sexism, by providing a systematic and rigorous synthesis of the available evidence. The paper also highlights the importance of addressing gender issues in religious contexts.

Precarious manhood theory states that manhood, relative to womanhood, is widely conceptualized as a social status that is hard to win, easy to lose, and must be proved repeatedly via action (Vandello et al., 2008). Cultures perpetuate beliefs in the precarity of manhood: men are being held to stricter gender rules than women, especially in cultures characterized by greater male-male status struggles (Bosson et al., 2022). After obtaining data from eight culturally diverse countries, we will analyze men's reactions to situations threatening their masculinity. The survey was conducted in 8 countries with varying levels of precarious manhood beliefs, collectivism, and gender equality (Bosson et al.. 2021): Australia, Chile, Germany, Norway, Poland, South Africa, and the United States. 1,310 adult men gave their responses regarding their feelings (i.e. anger, frustration, happiness, and pride) and judgments regarding the level of threat for manhood upon reading each of 9 vignettes detailing situations that may be viewed as masculinity threatening (materials used available at https://osf.io/94u53/). Participants were randomly assigned to two conditions: a situation happening to them or to a male stranger. The content of the scenes was created based on the analysis of qualitative data from our previous study - the situations were created based on qualitative data collection from 62 countries where respondents were given examples of situations in which men can appear unmanly. The situations depicted: - wearing make-up during a work-related videoconference, - walking holding dresses in a clothing store, - crying in public, - female partner faking orgasms, - struggling with the weight of groceries in public, - betraying another man’s trust, - female partner earning more money, - failing at protecting female partner, - being indecisive. After reading through each of the 9 scenarios, respondents were presented with 8 items that measured their sense of manhood being threatened. The dependent variable will be a factor score for each participant based on the CFA output (factors presented in the "Dependent variables" section), using items presented after each scene (e.g. "This situation makes me feel angry"). We plan to conduct measurement invariance to validate the use of our newly developed tool for cross-cultural analyses and then compare means across countries.

It has been 30 years since a large cross-cultural study was carried out testing people's understanding of masculinity and femininity (Williams & Best, 1990). This study is part of a larger, umbrella project that is collecting data from over 40 countries to determine how people think about men and women today. In this project, we examine the isomorphism of a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs. Precarious manhood beliefs are beliefs that manhood, relative to womanhood, is a social status that (1) is hard to earn, (2) is easy to lose, and (3) must be demonstrated repeatedly via public action. We test whether the brief, 4-item Precarious Manhood Beliefs (PMB) scale demonstrates statistical isomorphism across at least 45 (and up to 56) countries. We also examine the unique associations of the PMB with two cross-culturally validated measures of gender beliefs: the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996), and the Ambivalence toward Men Scale (Glick & Fiske, 1999). Finally, we examine whether the PMB correlates with country-level indicators of gender equality (the Global Gender Gap Index) and human development (the Human Development Index).

this is a sub-project of DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/FQD4P and is focused on a subset of the data as explained in the documentation here

Binary prescriptive and proscriptive gender stereotypes (i.e., gender rules) describe how women and men should or should not be (Prentice & Carranza, 2002). According to precarious manhood theory (Vandello & Bosson, 2013), men should face stricter gender rules than women (Koenig, 2018). That is, men are expected to display agency (male prescription) and avoid weakness (male proscription) more strongly than women are expected to display communality (female prescription) and avoid dominance (female proscription). This study examines (target and participant) sex differences in binary gender rules in 62 nations. We examine: (1) whether people endorse gender rules more strongly for men than women (target differences); (2) whether target differences in gender rules differ by participant gender (that is, whether male and female participants display different patterns of target gender rules); (3) whether patterns of target and participant differences in gender rules are larger in countries lower in gender equality, which typically have stricter sex-based labor divisions and more rigid expectations that men will uphold traditional male gender role norms; and (4) whether target and participant differences in gender rules covary with other nation-level variables (wealth, human development, precarious manhood beliefs, LGBT rights) and individual-level variables (precarious manhood beliefs, awareness of gender inequality).

Towards Gender Harmony project full dataset will be released in 2023. Researchers who wish to use it can contact Towards Gender Harmony Principal Investigator: Natasza Kosakowska-Berezecka, natasza.kosakowska.ug.edu.pl

It has been 30 years since large cross-cultural study has been carried out testing the understanding of masculinity and femininity (Williams & Best, 1990). Our project aims to collect data from at least 40 countries to determine how people think about men and women today. What is more our project examines the universality of gender stereotypes about men who, according to results of research (carried out so far mainly within Western cultural contexts) must conform to norms such as agency, dominance, pursue high social status, and avoid femininity.

Gender stereotypes encompass expectations regarding men’s and women’s traits, behaviors, and roles that are descriptive, prescriptive, and proscriptive in their character (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Rudman et al., 2012). Williams and Best (1990) conducted a large-scale, 26-country study of gender stereotypes and reported that agency is stereotypically associated with masculinity, and communality is associated with femininity (Kite, Deaux, & Haines, 2008; Williams & Best, 1990). However the question remains whether these understandings of male and female stereotypical traits tested cross-culturally over 30 years ago are still valid, especially in light of gender equality progress and feminist movements across the world. The only insight we have comes from US data: recent analysis by Eagly and colleagues (2020) compared US data and found some change, but still substantial stability regarding gender and communal traits. In our study we will focus on the content of descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes in 62 countries 30 years after the Williams and Best (1990) study was completed and analyze the relationships between country’s 1) gender equality levels and 2) collectivism with the content of gender stereotypes regarding four dimensions: agency, communality, dominance & weakness. There are two main concepts that we can relate to in our analyses. First, social role theory posits that stereotypically gendered expectations concerning men and women should vary cross-culturally, due to differences in divisions of labor and distributions into various occupational and social roles across countries (Wood & Eagly, 2012). Past research on gender gaps has conceptualized cross-cultural differences using nation-level gender parity (e.g., using the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index; e.g. Else-Quest et al., 2010). Baker and Jones’ (1993) gender stratification hypothesis predicts that gender differences will be larger in societies where opportunities are heavily stratified based on gender—e.g., in low gender egalitarian countries. Nevertheless cross-cultural research focused on gender stereotypes and their content has been scarce and the multination analyses mostly focused on sex differences in interests and occupations across countries (and not on the content gender stereotypes concerning traits) - with many studies showing that sex differences increased as nations became more gender-equal and some showing opposite effects. Our analysis will be the first systematic multination analysis of the content of both descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes not only with regard to agency, and communality, but also other gendered dimensions often cited in the literature such as dominance and weakness (Rudman et al, 2012). Second, we will test the cultural moderation of gender stereotypes hypothesis (Cuddy et al., 2015). This hypothesis states that characteristics that are particularly valued in a culture will be ascribed more to men than to women. Cuddy et al. (2015) reanalyzed Williams and Best’s (1990) gender stereotype data from 26 nations and found that the individualism-collectivism dimension (Hofstede, 2001) predicted the finding of collectivistic traits as more stereotypically masculine and individualistic traits as less stereotypically masculine. In other words, the extent to which men are expected to be agentic and women to be communal will depend on the content of the core values important to a given culture. To our knowledge, relatively few studies (cf., Cuddy et al. 2015; Steinmetz, Bosak, Sczesny, & Eagly, 2014) have empirically examined how core cultural values such as collectivism shape the specific content of gender stereotypes. In our research, we expand on previous results as we focus on the nation level collectivism effects on descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes of women and men relating to their agency and communality, along with dominance and weakness. Our plan includes the following steps: We will compare mean ratings of agency and communality being stereotypically associated with men and women (descriptive stereotypes) in two datasets: a) Williams & Best (1990) data and b) our data from Towards Gender Harmony (TGH) project. The comparison will be done between 19 countries overlapping in the two projects: Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, South Africa, the United States. Using the whole TGH sample (62 countries) - we will generate an overall gender stereotypically index for women and men (reflecting an average across all countries) of descriptions and prescriptions concerning agency, communality, dominance and weakness. We will analyze the relationship between: a) countries’s gender equality levels and countries’ gender stereotypicality indices to verify whether countries score higher or lower in gender stereotypicality index depending on nation level gender equality levels. Here we will look at four aspects of gender equality: · its levels (from low to high) · its dynamics over time (stable and changing gender equality progress, and the speed of that change) · vertical gender segregation (referring to underrepresentation of women in powerful and high-status roles), horizontal segregation is the clustering of women and men in occupations of similar status but differing demands · horizontal gender segregation (referring to the clustering of women and men in occupations of similar status but differing demands) (Charles, 1992; Wong & Charles, 2020). b) country’s collectivism levels and established country’s gender stereotypicality index to verify whether countries score higher or lower on the gender stereotypicality index with regard to agency and communality depending on country level collectivism levels.

Social role theory posits that binary sex differences in gendered self-views should be larger in less egalitarian countries, reflecting these countries’ more pronounced sex-based power and labor divisions. Conversely, evolutionary theorists suggest that sex differences in gendered self-views should be larger in more egalitarian countries, reflecting these countries’ greater autonomy support. Using data from 62 countries (N = 28,640) we examine sex differences in gendered self-views (agency and communality) as a function of country-level objective gender equality (the Global Gender Gap Index [GGGI]) and subjective distributions of social power (the Power Distance Index [PDI]). Findings show patterns that differ by dimension: In more egalitarian countries, sex differences in agency are smaller, and sex differences in communality are larger. These patterns are driven primarily by men’s self-views. We consider possible causes and implications of these findings.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-spp-10.1177_19485506221129687 for Gendered Self-Views Across 62 Countries: A Test of Competing Models by Natasza Kosakowska-Berezecka, Jennifer K. Bosson, Paweł Jurek, Tomasz Besta, Michał Olech, Joseph A. Vandello, Michael Bender, Justine Dandy, Vera Hoorens, Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti, Eric Mankowski, Satu Venäläinen, Sami Abuhamdeh, Collins Badu Agyemang, Gülçin Akbaş, Nihan Albayrak-Aydemir, Soline Ammirati, Joel Anderson, Gulnaz Anjum, Amarina Ariyanto, John Jamir Benzon R. Aruta, Mujeeba Ashraf, Aistė Bakaitytė, Maja Becker, Chiara Bertolli, Dashamir Bërxulli, Deborah L. Best, Chongzeng Bi, Katharina Block, Mandy Boehnke, Renata Bongiorno, Janine Bosak, Annalisa Casini, Qingwei Chen, Peilian Chi, Vera Cubela Adoric, Serena Daalmans, Soledad de Lemus, Sandesh Dhakal, Nikolay Dvorianchikov, Sonoko Egami, Edgardo Etchezahar, Carla Sofia Esteves, Laura Froehlich, Efrain Garcia-Sanchez, Alin Gavreliuc, Dana Gavreliuc, Ángel Gomez, Francesca Guizzo, Sylvie Graf, Hedy Greijdanus, Ani Grigoryan, Joanna Grzymała-Moszczyńska, Keltouma Guerch, Marie Gustafsson Sendén, Miriam-Linnea Hale, Hannah Hämer, Mika Hirai, Lam Hoang Duc, Martina Hřebíčková, Paul B. Hutchings, Dorthe Høj Jensen, Serdar Karabati, Kaltrina Kelmendi, Gabriella Kengyel, Narine Khachatryan, Rawan Ghazzawi, Mary Kinahan, Teri A. Kirby, Monika Kovacs, Desiree Kozlowski, Vladislav Krivoshchekov, Kuba Kryś, Clara Kulich, Tai Kurosawa, Nhan Thi Lac An, Javier Labarthe-Carrara, Mary Anne Lauri, Ioana Latu, Abiodun Musbau Lawal, Junyi Li, Jana Lindner, Anna Lindqvist, Angela T. Maitner, Elena Makarova, Ana Makashvili, Shera Malayeri, Sadia Malik, Tiziana Mancini, Claudia Manzi, Silvia Mari, Sarah E. Martiny, Claude-Hélène Mayer, Vladimir Mihić, Jasna MiloševićĐorđević, Eva Moreno-Bella, Silvia Moscatelli, Andrew Bryan Moynihan, Dominique Muller, Erita Narhetali, Félix Neto, Kimberly A. Noels, Boglárka Nyúl, Emma C. O’Connor, Danielle P. Ochoa, Sachiko Ohno, Sulaiman Olanrewaju Adebayo, Randall Osborne, Maria Giuseppina Pacilli, Jorge Palacio, Snigdha Patnaik, Vassilis Pavlopoulos, Pablo Pérez de León, Ivana Piterová, Juliana Barreiros Porto, Angelica Puzio, Joanna Pyrkosz-Pacyna, Erico Rentería Pérez, Emma Renström, Tiphaine Rousseaux, Michelle K. Ryan, Saba Safdar, Mario Sainz, Marco Salvati, Adil Samekin, Simon Schindler, A. Timur Sevincer, Masoumeh Seydi, Debra Shepherd, Sara Sherbaji, Toni Schmader, Cláudia Simão, Rosita Sobhie, Jurand Sobiecki, Lucille De Souza, Emma Sarter, Dijana Sulejmanović, Katie E. Sullivan, Mariko Tatsumi, Lucy Tavitian-Elmadjian, Suparna Jain Thakur, Quang Thi Mong Chi, Beatriz Torre, Ana Torres, Claudio V. Torres, Beril Türkoğlu, Joaquín Ungaretti, Timothy Valshtein, Colette Van Laar, Jolanda van der Noll, Vadym Vasiutynskyi, Christin-Melanie Vauclair, Neharika Vohra, Marta Walentynowicz, Colleen Ward, Anna Włodarczyk, Yaping Yang, Vincent Yzerbyt, Valeska Zanello, Antonella Ludmila Zapata-Calvente, Magdalena Zawisza, Rita Žukauskienė and Magdalena Żadkowska in Social Psychological and Personality Science

Precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action. Here, we present cross-cultural data on a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs (the Precarious Manhood Beliefs scale [PMB]) that covaries meaningfully with other cross-culturally validated gender ideologies and with country-level indices of gender equality and human development. Using data from university samples in 62 countries across 13 world regions (N = 33,417), we demonstrate: (1) the psychometric isomorphism of the PMB (i.e., its comparability in meaning and statistical properties across the individual and country levels); (2) the PMB’s distinctness from, and associations with, ambivalent sexism and ambivalence toward men; and (3) associations of the PMB with nation-level gender equality and human development. Findings are discussed in terms of their statistical and theoretical implications for understanding widely-held beliefs about the precariousness of the male gender role.