Masculine Vs Feminine
“Culture is what people carry within themselves in the way of thinking; feeling; and potential acting which were learned throughout their lifetime.”
Geert Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind.
According to the theories of Hofstede, culture is the "collective mindset that makes a whole group to act in the same way, in other words a kind of “software of the mind” on which thoughts, emotions and actions of a group or population are based. In Hofstede’s perception the core of a culture is recognizable in the values significant within the culture itself. That can be defined as a tendency to prefer certain behaviors more than other and the differences and the comparison between different cultures are based on these values.
We’ll go a bit deeper into the expression of masculine and feminine societies:
In a masculine society social roles of gender are clearly divided. The men are considered to be assertive, strong and focused on material success.In this society people tend to value highly the opportunity to earn money, status symbols, recognitions, opportunities for promotion, the challenge.
In a feminine society gender roles overlap each other and values are placed on good relationships with the boss, collaboration, living in desirable areas, having a sense of safety and quality of life.
Before we go more in depth in our analysis we must apologise for making assumptions about the whole of Belgium, while actually we should’ve compared the culture of Flanders, instead of the culture of Belgium, with that of Italy. Flanders has a different culture than Wallonia. In our last blog we failed to make the difference between these two parts of Belgium.
This consideration is effective in Italy as well, where we find values and traditions diametrically opposed between the north and south. As representative of the Northern Area this is the one to which I’m referring to expose the Italian culture.
In Flanders, women are capable of obtaining high profile jobs in (big) companies. According to the law of Belgium there cannot be a difference in treating the sexes. Both are equal. It’s not because a person is masculine that he has a greater chance of getting the job. If this should happen, the woman can file a complaint of discrimination.
The idea of women being the weaker sex is almost extinct. Yes there are differences between a male and a female; everyone has his strengths and weaknesses. Also, the more masculine cultural look on life, where the woman stays at home and takes care of the household, has almost perished in Flanders. Of course there are still women who want to stay home and take care of the children, but then this will be a carefully considered decision. Nowadays there are even men who voluntarily take on the responsibility of taking care of the household.In Italy a large percentage of women stay at home because of the differences in roles: even finding a job, most of the times, women get the lowest roles and they are rarely placed in charge.
Sometimes there is a kind of humour around women in politics and in higher roles because to obtain respect and evaluation they are supposed to behave with aggression and competition, which are usually male characteristics.
Running a business or succeeding in their career, Italian women have to be careful if they plan to have a family as well; this is due to the fact that most of the times there aren’t such facilities (flexibility in the timetable, kindergartens inside the companies where they work etc) as in the northern countries of Europe and the decision will definitively be to choose between the career and the family. All these elements show clearly how the Italian culture is pervaded by masculine’s values.
In some aspects you can actually find a mix of masculine and feminine characteristics in Flanders. For example, Hofstede talks about the difference in stress. In masculine cultures the stress is on competition and quality of performance, while in feminine cultures the stress is more on solidarity and the quality of life.
In the professional world, quality of performance is of high importance; people have to deliver good work to keep their job. Good work isn’t the only factor; it has to be done as fast as possible. But in the private life the quality of life is more essential. This actually goes hand in hand with their quality of performance. If you want the life of the luxurious, you act differently than when you are aiming for an average way of life.
In the professional world, quality of performance is of high importance; people have to deliver good work to keep their job. Good work isn’t the only factor; it has to be done as fast as possible. But in the private life the quality of life is more essential. This actually goes hand in hand with their quality of performance. If you want the life of the luxurious, you act differently than when you are aiming for an average way of life.
In Italy there is an idiomatic way of saying to describe when someone wants to have two things which are incompatible and it’s something like “to have the wife drunk and the barrel filled” or “to have your cake and eat it too”. Indeed Italians would most of the time like to have both a high performance in the workplace and a high quality of life: see employees that are both “seek” (their boss know them to be seek at home) and “spending time at the seaside”(they’re not really seek at all)! This is clearly an extreme version of the Italian stereotype.
The high performance in the workplace is also researched because there’s big lack of job’s offers from companies, so people who want to maintain a sense of “security” try to show as much professionalism and reliability as possible in order to keep their job safe, even if in this sense most of us would prefer to work less and have a higher quality of life, spending more time with our loved ones and friends.
Differences are mostly solved based on compromise and negotiation, which is a trait of a feminine culture. Although this is assumed as the norm in the Flemish culture, it can sometimes get out of hand and result in conflict. But nonetheless, this is not accepted. If one of your colleagues reacts in an angry way towards you, they will get a notification and a lecture from your boss.
We all know from the first blog that Italian people are not scared of showing their emotions. This can easily bring us to understand why most of the times differences are solved by conflicts because they seem to be very willing to discuss lively! But this is not always indicative of a real conflict; it’s mostly a cultural behaviour. Indeed after the conflict the “feminine” side prevails leading to find a compromise. Are you watching two people debating in violent terms? Don’t be too surprised to see them after a few minutes going away shaking one another’s hands as friends!
Most Flemish people work to live. They like to go to work; but on weekends, they are happy to escape from the stress and constant focus on the job. Going to a restaurant to celebrate something or just to be together with the family is something that is done very often (by the people who have the means).
In the north of Italy people live to work; they spend most of their daily life in the workplace, sometimes they have even more than one job. However this is often due to the high cost of life, it can happen that after a while they give up and decide to “take back” their life again.
With regards to the sympathy for the weak which is a synonym for solidarity and feminine vision, this is predictable in family situations. But in social life the strong one, the one with more success and prestige is seen as the model and this brings a trace of competition in the society.
I would like to conclude that in Southern Italian culture the society is much more feminine. People work to live. They have solidarity both in the family and in the social context and there is still the tradition of living together with all the family and relatives in the same big house.
