Hofstede Model: Masculinity and Femininity Dimension Analysis

This report analyses the Masculinity and Femininity dimension of Hofstede model and its impact on the culture of the country. It discusses the behaviour of the society and its impact on the values of men and women. The report also highlights the limitations of the Hofstede model and its scope.

Hofstede Model
“Masculinity and Femininity”

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Introduction
Hofstede’s cultural dimension is a theory of cross-cultural communication which is
introduced by Geert Hofstede. Hofstede model was introduced by the personal research
department of IBM Europe in 1965 (Bakir, Blodgett, Vitell, and Rose, 2015). This is the first
theory which is used to explain the differences between the cultures. This model describes the
effects of culture on the value of its members. Hofstede model is developed to analyse the
values of employees in the world by IBM between 1967 and 1973 (Bakir, Blodgett, Vitell,
and Rose, 2015). Earlier the original theory has four dimensions along to understand the
cultural values such as individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity-
femininity and power distance. The other research of Hofstede introduced the fifth dimension
which is long-term orientation. And in 2010, the sixth dimension is again introduced which is
indulgence versus self-restraint. In the present days, the Hofstede model has six dimensions
to analyze the culture value of the different country. This model is used in research especially
for cross-cultural psychology, cross-cultural communication, and international management.
This model is also encouraged to research on the other aspects of culture such as a social
belief (Saleem, and Larimo, 2017). In this report, critical analysis has been done on the
“Masculinity and Femininity dimension of Hofstede model” by western bias.
Masculinity and Femininity
Masculinity and femininity have a different meaning in which the first meaning is in the
context of biological that refers the sexual characteristics. The second meaning is in the terms
of a sociological which refers to the real and symbolic roles that society attributes to men and
women (Darroch, 2014).

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Masculinity defines the preferences of a society for achievement, heroism, material rewards
for success. In this society, Women perform their values by performing household activity.
Feminine society shares a modest and caring view equally with the men. There is no
difference between the men and women in this society.
Behaviour of Dimension
This dimension helps to analyse the nature of the society either it modest and care society or
strong society which main aim is to achieve and won the rewards. If the society is
masculinity then it means the society has a strong power to win the rewards. Feminine society
means caring nature of human beings which takes care of the feeling of people. Hofstede
model analyses the culture of a country which states the nature of a society that is why
masculinity and femininity include in the five dimensions of the model. It also helps to
analyse the development of the country by analysing the human mentality (Rodriguez
Mosquera, 2016).
Criticism
Masculinity and femininity dimension analyse the mentality of a human being by analysing
the behaviour of people towards the role of male and female. Masculinity society believes
that the males have the responsibility to earn money and the women have the responsibility to
take care of people. It helps to analyse the organisation in expanding the business at the
international level. This dimension analyses the organisational culture to the national culture
which helps all level of the multinational company. It analyses the mentality of employees
which directly affect the output of the organisation. Before entering the country, it is
necessary for the organisation to analyse the behaviour of the people and understand the
culture of the country. Most of the manufacturing companies use this dimension just because
to analyse the behaviour of labour towards the work and their mentality towards gender

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inequality (Oakley, 2016). To extend the business the organisation analyse the culture of the
country and the behaviour of employees.
If the culture of the country is feminist then it does not show that they will adopt some other
culture; this dimension just tells about the present cultural scenario and specifically does not
show the way in which it is flexible. It has been seen that the dimension of Hofstede model
analyses the cultural changes of the environment. But it did not analyse the reasons or causes
of changes because it analyses the present scenario. It is not flexible to analyse the more
information at a higher level. It is beneficial to analyse the situation but it is necessary to
analyse the causes behind the situation. It has been seen that it is stable for a certain point
which states that this dimension is not dynamic in nature which helps to analyse the situation
in the market. New companies are requiring analysing the changes of culture to enter in the
market (Rodriguez, and Boyer, 2018). This dimension is not useful at a certain point in time.
This dimension also does not elaborate about the factors that are making changes in the
culture which is very crucial to understand for a company when it is expanding in a country.
It has been seen that this dimension does not about the factors which affect the culture and
that is very important to understand the culture of the country. Factors which affect or reasons
behind the changes affect the society.
This dimension also does not provide a clear idea about the future of the culture that is
present in a country. It has been seen that this dimension analyse the changes in the culture of
the country but it is difficult to predict the future scenario due to changes in culture.
Masculinity and Femininity dimension of Hofstede model does not elaborate the future factor
which can affect the culture of the country. It is necessary for the company to analyse the
future factor which affects the culture of the country because these affects the culture of
society. The culture of the country is developed by the people of the country and their
mentality for a particular thing. Changing the behaviour of people is a factor of changing the

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culture of the country but it is difficult to predict that this factor affects the society at what
point in time (Whalen, 2016).
Masculinity versus Femininity also refers to the distribution of values between the genders
and that is another issue for a society to find a range of solution. In Masculinity, it defines the
women values are different from the men’s value. In Masculinity countries, men value means
more competitive, achieving rewards and others but women values are modest and caring. It
states that this dimension develops the differentiation in society between men and women
values. Feminine countries have same values of men and women which reduce the gap
between the men’s values and women’s values (Donnelly, and Twenge, 2017). This
dimension is directly affecting the economic growth of the country. The difference between
males and female is a major issue which affects the lives of people and it is a major factor of
change in culture. This dimension analyses the differences between the values of men and
women and the beliefs of people. It is necessary for the company to analyse the culture of the
country and believes of people towards the values of men and women because it directly
affects the output of the company. At the time of hiring the people of expanding country, it is
essential to analyse theirs believes if the country is a masculinity country then the country has
fewer women labour as compared to men. There are many companies in which the women
labour is required to perform the work and services then the company faces the loss in the
situation of masculinity country (Drydakis, Sidiropoulou, Bozani, Selmanovic, and Patnaik,
2018). But this dimension analyses the culture at a high level it is not analysing the culture at
a small level which is a major issue.
It has been seen that this dimension develops the confusion by the labelling of the heading. It
gives the label masculine and feminist which defines the role of male and female but it also
has another meaning that is not defined by the label. Masculinity behaviour is achieving
rewards, and strong competition but Femininity behaviours are modest and caring for the

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people. Thus, it can be said that this dimension indicates the success or quality of life of
people. This dimension affects the success and life of people; it is agreeable that this
dimension is an indicator of success and quality of life rather than the sexist indicator which
helps to analyse the values of men and women (Engle, and Nash, 2015).
Limitation of the Hofstede Model
It is agreed that Hofstede dimension has limited scope to analyse the cultural changes and it
contains the limited information related to the cultural changes. Hofstede dimension does not
elaborate the factor due to which the changes are incurred in the country. It also does not tell
the factor which affects the society and changes the culture of the country. The analysis
cannot be able to predict future changes and the factors are also not analysed by society.
Hofstede model develops confusion in understanding the cultural value system and cultural
grouping (Suriadi, Ouyang, Aalst, and Hofstede, 2015).
Cultural grouping defines the cultural norms which can be spread by the cultural group who
participated in the events. Cultural group selection exists in the two different groups who
have the different culture. Participated people have to understand the culture of different
countries for the selection process of the cultural group. Hofstede model helps to understand
the culture but at the certain limit which is not enough for participation in the cultural group.
Cultural group selection provides a compelling explanation for how large-scale complex
societies have formed. Hofstede model analyses the culture of the country but it fails to
elaborate on the factors of forming large-scale societies. It has been seen that this model has
limited scope to understand the cultural scope. Although, people can easily understand the
culture and cultural changes of the country the reasons and explanations are required in a
cultural grouping cannot be easily understandable (Schieb-Bienfait, Saives, Charles-Pauvers,
Emin, and Morteau, 2018).

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Cultural value focuses on values which the members can broadly share with each other.
Values of society define the respect of people for each other. The cultural value system is a
set of consistent values which is used for the purpose of ethical or ideological integrity.
Hofstede model does not elaborate on the ethical and unethical factor; it analyses the
behaviour of a country which is not enough to understand the cultural value system. One of
the dimensions of Hofstede model is masculine and feminine explains the values of men and
women in a country. But it does not analyse the factor due to which the change incurred in
culture. But it fails to analyse the ethical and unethical factor of the country. Thus, it can be
said that the Hofstede model is limited to understand the cultural value system.
Conclusion
From the above analysis, it has been concluded that the Hofstede model analyse the culture of
the country. There are six dimensions which help to analyse the culture so that an
organisation can expand their business at the international level. Masculine and feminine
dimension is one of the dimensions of Hofstede model which helps to analyse the culture and
behaviour of the society. But it contains the limited information which is not enough to
understand the cultural value system and cultural grouping. Although, Hofstede model is
beneficial to enhance the understanding of culture it contains the limited information as per
the requirement of the cultural group and cultural value system.

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