> The extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these is reflected in the score on Uncertainty Avoidance.
My experience is that those numbers pretty much rank in reverse when it comes to actual risk taking. It seems weird to me that this metric as described would not correlate to that. Swedes and the Swiss are pretty (extremely) risk averse compared to all Italians and Portuguese I've ever met and observed... And Thailand ranks above Sweden? That's nonsensical...
> Countries exhibiting high Uncertainty Avoidance maintain rigid codes of belief and behaviour and are intolerant of unorthodox behaviour and ideas. In these cultures there is an emotional need for rules (even if the rules never seem to work) time is money, people have an inner urge to be busy and work hard, precision and punctuality are the norm, innovation may be resisted, security is an important element in individual motivation. Decisions are taken after careful analysis of all available information.
I feel like whoever made this up hasn't been to any of these countries.
Remember when that hypermasculine Russian military recruiting commercial went viral? They only give Russia 36 on the masculinity index. (US gets 62)
Here's the construct description:
>The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. Society at large is more competitive. Its opposite, Femininity, stands for a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak and quality of life. Society at large is more consensus-oriented.
>In the business context Masculinity versus Femininity is sometimes also related to as “tough versus tender” cultures.
Austria ranks 79 on masculinity. Japan ranks 95, probably one of the highest.
>The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success.
This definitely does not sound like the Japan I live in, almost the opposite in fact. Japanese people are absolutely not known for assertiveness in particular; it's very much the opposite, they're infamous for being passive-aggressive. Heroism is definitely not a thing here. Achievement is so-so: being a reliable company workers and breadwinner is definitely highly valued, but not being a high achiever the way American culture, for instance, would value. Material rewards are valued though, but even here not as much as in America (which only ranks 62 somehow).
>Its opposite, Femininity, stands for a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak and quality of life. Society at large is more consensus-oriented.
This is absolutely Japan in a nutshell, for the most part, especially the part about being consensus-oriented. Japanese business culture is completely based on this: no decisions ever get made quickly or unilaterally; they require tons of boring meetings to build consensus before something big gets done. Caring for the weak and quality of life isn't as big as some western European nations, at least in terms of government policy, but it's still there, especially with, for instance, respect for elders (there's even a national holiday just for this).
By contrast, America ranking only 62 here seems like a bad joke. American culture is all about achievement, heroism (hello, Marvel movies!), assertiveness (even when you're completely wrong), and certainly material rewards for success. Caring for the weak? Americans hate that: that's why they vote against social programs any time they can. "Quality of life" isn't a concern in America.
If these people got these two countries SO completely and obviously wrong on the masculinity index, I really have no trust in their rankings for anything else.
The page explains that Japan is ranked highly "masculine" because of how competitive the society is.
> What you see is a severe competition between groups. From very young age at kindergartens, children learn to compete on sports day for their groups (traditionally red team against white team).
In corporate Japan, you see that employees are most motivated when they are fighting in a winning team against their competitors. What you also see as an expression of Masculinity in Japan is the drive for excellence and perfection in their material production (monodukuri) and in material services (hotels and restaurants) and presentation (gift wrapping and food presentation) in every aspect of life. Notorious Japanese workaholism is another expression of their Masculinity. It is still hard for women to climb up the corporate ladders in Japan with their Masculine norm of hard and long working hours.
So they explain away why their number is completely opposite of what it should be, given their definition of "masculinity" in a culture. Their explanation is BS: Japan is a very consensus-oriented society, not one based on individual heroism, at all. So one thing must be a lie: either their definition of "masculinity", or their ranking of Japan. They can't be simultaneously true.
Their actual definition says nothing about workaholism, or drive for excellence and perfection. In fact, I don't see how those are "masculine" in the slightest (nor are they "feminine", they're orthogonal issues).
> being a reliable company workers and breadwinner is definitely highly valued, but not being a high achiever the way American culture, for instance, would value
I've always thought academic achievement and money mattered quite a bit in Japan. I've heard the phrase "high achievement, high income, high stature" as a description of the traits desired/expected in Japanese men.
Sure, academic achievement is valued, as is making money (which is valued in every capitalist society). But the definition given is:
"The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success."
The type of individualistic, heroic achievement that American culture values isn't valued here. Being a high achiever so you can be a great worker for your company is, and of course women want men who are tall and earn a lot of money, which again seems somewhat universal.
But going back to the definition as given, there are 4 specific things listed here. Two of them are "heroism" and "assertiveness". Neither of these things are cornerstones of Japanese culture at all. Japan is a collectivist society where people are anything but assertive. Yet Japan is ranked 95. This makes no sense to me. These 4 traits together seem to accurately describe American society, yet America is 62. If anything, these numbers are reversed.
Another thing I'll point out: in America, CEOs make tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year, orders of magnitude higher than the lowest-paid workers. In Japan, this is not the case at all. Top company executives aren't paid remotely as much as America's highest-paid execs, and the gap between the lowest and highest paid is a fraction as much. (The execs at the biggest companies are paid a lot of course, but not compared to the truly obscene compensation packages American CEOs get.) There's a definite sense of one's duty to the society here that simply does not exist in the US. So yes, "material rewards for success" is valued here, but not the way it is in the US. In the US, people seem to literally worship wealth and wealthy people; here in Japan, rich people are generally not celebrities. So I would say even this factor, "material rewards for success" is not as valued here as in the US.
In summary, Japan's ranking simply does not fit the definition of "masculinity" given, in comparison to other nations, particularly the US.
