Egalitarianism is an abstract concept that doesn’t exist IRL.

Readership: All
Theme: Culture
Author’s Note: This post explores comments from RPA and LastHoldOut, and adds some insights taken from an email exchange between Jack, Oscar, and Red Pill Apostle on 2023/7/27.
Length: 2,000 words
Reading Time: 10 minutes + 2-22 minutes of video

Are sex differences more pronounced in egalitarian societies?

Under The Beta Factory (2023/7/24), Thedeti shared a video from Dr. Paul Maxwell that examined Churchianity.  Maxwell attempted to answer the question of what makes certain versions of masculinity ‘toxic’, and how the church might begin to remedy the situation that we’re in.

Here’s the video, in case you missed it.

SelfWire (Dr. Paul Maxwell): Evangelical Culture is Beta Culture (2018/12/12) Length: 21:56

From around 2:15 until just after the 4:00 minute mark, Maxwell mentioned that men’s traits and women’s traits tend to be more pronounced in egalitarian societies.  Here Maxwell says [emphasis mine],

“…in order to fit into evangelical culture, you must act like a woman, and [this is] of course, 100% accurate and this is the case for several reasons.  The first reason this is the case is that male traits are demonized, so in order to excel in evangelical culture you must be high in trait agreeableness, which is a female quality, a well-established psychological fact.

A meta-analysis in the Journal of Psychology Bulletin [1] surveyed all the major studies between 1940 and 1992 and found that women consistently scored higher in trait agreeableness and tender-mindedness while men scored higher in trait assertiveness, openness to new ideas, and self-esteem.  Another study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology [2] found that these differences were most pronounced in egalitarian Western cultures, which the authors of the study note contradicts the notion that women and men self-separate merely because of socially constructed conceptions of gender.  In other words, women being high in trait agreeableness and tender-mindedness, and men being high in trait assertiveness, openness to new ideas, and self-esteem was actually more pronounced in Western countries which try to make everything fair and try to give men and women equal opportunity for everything.  Men and women actually self-separated out more, which the authors of this study noted actually contradicts this notion that “Well, women may be deferential because they’ve been socially conditioned to be deferential.”  No!  The more egalitarian the society, the more agreeable and tender-minded the women were; the more assertive, and open to new ideas, and self-confident men were.

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So, scientifically speaking there is something inherently masculine about assertiveness and openness and confidence.  It propelled the American Dream into the West, into the frontier, into industry, and evangelical culture has essentially cut the balls off of men by telling them that these qualities are sinful, that they ought to be docile and timid and speak in an airy voice about Jesus in order to succeed in the church.”

In this excerpt, Maxwell has two points.

  1. Evangelical culture is emasculating.
  2. Men are more masculine and women are more feminine in Western Egalitarian cultures.

The first point builds on Maxwell’s larger message about the effeminacy of masculinity within evangelicalism.  Those who are Red Pilled and read up on Dalrock would not disagree with the assertion that most Protestant churches are Beta Factories, but at the time Maxwell produced this video, this was still controversial, as were all things Red Pill in general.

The second point, the assertion that egalitarianism fosters both masculinity and femininity, was not so controversial at that time but is becoming more so now that the social causes of the Churchian version of masculinity are beginning to be dissected.  Namely, how can Complementarianism / Egalitarianism enhance masculinity and still be a Beta Factory?

Jack’s Research

Since I’ve lived in both the U.S. and Taiwan for many years, I found it very hard to believe that sex differences are more pronounced in egalitarian societies, so I did some research on this.

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Maxwell’s original article that his video is based on has been scrubbed from the internet, including The Wayback Machine.  However, he gave enough details in his video talk that I was able to locate the two research papers he cited [1,2].

Feingold’s paper in the Journal of Psychology Bulletin [1] doesn’t actually claim that sex differences are more pronounced in egalitarian societies.  Instead, the authors conclude that men and women have different sets of traits and that there are no noteworthy differences in these sets of traits across cultures.  This is a strike against egalitarianism.

Costa, et al.’s paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology [2] observes Maxwell’s claim in passing, as it was not the focus of their main research.  They were surprised and couldn’t explain why.

I did some more digging.  I could not find any research papers that established a causative link between augmented gender differences and egalitarianism.  However, I found a paper by Guimond [3] that answers the question indirectly.  Guimond asserts that gender differentiation is associated with Individualistic Cultures.

“At the cultural level, the Individualism / Collectivism Dimension identified by Hofstede was highly correlated with the overall level of gender differentiation, with Individualist cultures (such as the USA) showing larger gender differences than Collectivist ones (such as China).”

Here, Guimond is referring to Hofstede’s theory of “Cultural Dimensions”.  So this opens up another can of worms — Cultural Dimensions.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

Cultural differences and how various elements influence the characteristics of a culture may be assessed more easily when Hofstede’s theory of “Cultural Dimensions is considered.  A brief outline of Hofstede’s 6 Dimensions of Culture is given in the following illustration and an appendix at the bottom of this essay.  Hofstede’s book [4] on this topic (cited by Guimond) is listed in the References below.

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There are 3 Cultural Dimensions of interest to the discourses above; (1) Collectivism vs Individualism, (2) Power Distance (Egalitarianism), and possibly (3) Masculinity vs Femininity.*  It should be well noted that these Cultural Dimensions may appear in different combinations within different cultures.  It should also be noted that ‘Individualism’ is NOT a reference to the philosophy by the same name, although there may be some overlap.

* The Masculinity vs Femininity Dimension has recently been renamed “Motivation”.

If we rephrase Maxwell’s claim in terms of Cultural Dimensions, then Maxwell is saying that a decreased Power Distance specifically between the sexes (more gender egalitarianism) is somehow correlated with or directly causes gender differences to become more pronounced.  Our present question is whether this is true or not.  A second question appears — how does Collectivism vs Individualism play into this?

The influence of each of these 3 Dimensions is discussed as follows.

Collectivism vs Individualism

Guimond [3] stated that gender differentiation is associated with Individualistic cultures (as opposed to Collectivist cultures) — NOT cultures having a decreased Power Distance (gender egalitarianism).

Hofstede noted that Individualist cultures typically have a higher per capita income, have fewer children (lower fertility rate), are better educated, are typically more egalitarian in polity, and are more universalist (particular relationships are not counted, and cronyism and favoritism are considerably less acceptable, even to be considered unethical).  The question of why this is will be addressed in the following section.

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Power Distance (Egalitarianism)

Egalitarianism is a metric that appears under a different Cultural Dimension — Power Distance, which concerns how a culture deals with unequal distributions of power and defines the amount of inequality that is acceptable / normal.  Egalitarianism assumes that Men and Women are ‘equal’, and so then gender is swept into this assessment.

Flanagan [5] reviewed the work of leading anthropologists in the field while calling into question prevailing notions about egalitarianism, maintaining that few, if any, societies are without some form of hierarchy.

Here’s an interesting tangent.  Bruce G. Charlton [6] asserted that modern humans have an innate sense of equality, which is activated when they encounter inequalities in resources or health. This sense of injustice is subjective and not necessarily alleviated by mere statistical adjustments. Therefore, policy should aim to address individuals’ subjective experiences of inequality rather than focusing solely on population-level data.  Moreover, Charlton agrees with Hofstede in that egalitarianism is a psychological perception that has little to do with reality.

Power Distance (Collectivism + Egalitarianism)

Poyer [7] conducted a study of a Polynesian tribe that asserts an ethos of egalitarianism while also valuing a traditional rank hierarchy.  This supports Flanagan’s observations.

img-1783681378-6a50d1626a1261.66232549.jpgDalia Hernandez and Rudy Youngblood star in Apocalypto.

Individualism + Power Distance (Egalitarianism)

Here’s something we’ve always known, but were unaware that there was any supporting ¡ScIeNcE!  Béteille, et al. [8] reported that the tenets of Individualism and Equality are fundamentally opposed to one another.  For example, instances of affirmative discrimination in which collective identities (such as race) are stressed or promoted as a part of the pursuit of equality, often come at the expense of individual claims.  Given this dilemma, this paper concludes that the combination of Individualism and Egalitarianism creates a social schism on the psychological level — it either leads to a blanket assumption of human equality in which inequality is more or less ignored, or a preoccupation with instances of inequality.  Béteille’s work explains why complementarians / egalitarians either have their heads in the sand or else they are raving SJWs.

Masculinity vs Femininity*

Initially, I had hoped that Hofstede’s Dimension of Masculinity vs Femininity* might shed some answers to the question about Maxwell’s claim — whether sex differences are more pronounced in egalitarian societies.  However, Hofstede’s structure doesn’t relate to the question, because this dimension refers to which gender roles and traits are emphasized as a culture, NOT how much they are emphasized as a difference between individuals.

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Summary of Cultural Dimensions (as it relates to Maxwell’s claim)

Overall, it appears that gender differences ARE more pronounced in Western cultures but it is because of higher Individualism and less Collectivism, and NOT because of conditioned egalitarian ideals (reduced Power Distance).  It just so happens that most Individualistic cultures are characterized by a small Power Distance.  These papers described many other attributive causes as well, which I won’t go into for the sake of brevity.

Jack’s Theory

Back to the revised question.  Why do Individualistic cultures exhibit an enhanced gender differentiation?

I would venture to guess that it is because those in an Individualist culture are expected to be more independent, or IOW, dependent upon themselves to succeed and are thus more proactive about differentiating themselves from their competitors, establishing a name, and making something of themselves. In contrast, those in a Collectivist culture are pressured to be more socially conservative and not rock the boat, for example, the Chabuduo work ethic common in Chinese culture (Collectivist). Chabuduo (差不多) means, “Not too much, not too little, just right.”

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Red Pill Apostle’s Theory

Red Pill Apostle presented a parallel explanation for the existence of this seemingly counterintuitive observed data and the link between gender differentiation and Individualism.

It boils down quite simply to this.

  1. Men are competing against “equals”, usually physically and intellectually for the purpose of winning a higher rung on the ladder.  If men believe women are equals, as all modern women claim to be, then they are the competition to be defeated (according to Jack’s theory).
  2. Women are competing at being herd consensus builders in their interactions.  Women default to consensus-building because they do not like the individuality and aggressiveness of men and the more men push for dominance, the more women retreat to consensus-building.

Moreover, when there is an egalitarian expectation for there to be no sex differences and no standard roles, viz. Men and Women are ‘equal’, as is assumed by egalitarianism, then those traits natural to the sexes still manifest, rise to the surface, and become more obvious.  In the U.S.A. and perhaps most of the West, Individualism happens to be the social context in which these differences are expressed, and this emphasis on Individualism serves to enhance competition and accentuate these differences.

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Conclusions

To address Maxwell’s claim that sex differences are more pronounced in Egalitarian societies, simply put, correlation does not equal causation.  Instead, it would be less misleading to say that sex differences are more pronounced in Individualistic societies and that many Individualistic cultures also value a diminished Power Distance (i.e. egalitarianism).

Hence, there arise a few more questions of interest.

  1. Are there any Individualistic cultures that are also Hierarchical (strong Power Distance)?
  2. Is a low Power Distance a necessary condition for Individualism?  Or another way to say this…  Is Individualism fundamentally opposed to Hierarchy?
  3. Could Biblical Headship fit this description?

I’ll save these questions for another post.

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Appendix — Hofstede’s Dimensions of Culture

Hofstede’s book [4] (cited by Guimond [3]) and his later work describe a framework for cross-cultural communications called “Dimensions of Culture”.  Hofstede’s 6 Cultural Dimensions include…

  1. Collectivism vs Individualism – Describes the overall strength of the relation between an individual and other individuals in the society.
  2. Power Distance — Concerns the way the culture deals with unequal distributions of power and defines the amount of inequality that is acceptable / normal.
  3. Uncertainty Avoidance — Describes how cultures handle the fact that the future is unpredictable.
  4. Masculinity vs Femininity (also referred to as “Tough vs. Tender”) — The emphasis a culture places on practices or qualities that have traditionally been considered masculine or feminine.
  5. Pragmatic vs Normative — Refers to the time horizon of Long Term vs Short Term Orientation, and whether the Cultural values emphasize the past, present, or the future.
  6. Indulgent vs Restrained – How a society regards the gratification of basic and natural human needs and desires related to enjoying life and having fun; whether they are relatively freely allowed or strictly controlled and regulated through stringent social norms.

References

  1. Feingold, A. (1994). Gender differences in personality: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 429.  [PDF]
  2. Costa, P. T., Terracciano, A., & McCrae, R. R. (2001). Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: robust and surprising findings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(2), 322.  [PDF]
  3. Guimond, S. (2008). Psychological similarities and differences between women and men across cultures. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 494-510.  [PDF]
  4. Hofstede, G. (1980, 1984). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
  5. Flanagan, J. G. (1989). Hierarchy in simple” egalitarian” societies. Annual Review of Anthropology, 18(1), 245-266.
  6. Charlton, B. G. (1997). The Inequity of Inequality: Egalitarian Instincts and Evolutionary Psychology. Journal of Health Psychology, 2(3):413-425. doi:10.1177/135910539700200309
  7. Poyer, L. (1993). Egalitarianism in the Face of Hierarchy. Journal of Anthropological Research, 49, 111-133.
  8. Béteille, A., Ahmed, A. S., Allen, N. J., Carter, A. T., Ingold, T., Lock, G., Srinivas, M. N., & Varenne, H. (1986). Individualism and equality [and comments and replies]. Current Anthropology, 27(2), 121-134.

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