Measuring sex differences and measuring genderedness: Implications for cross-cultural gender-equality research and for understanding the role of femininity and masculinity in predicting important life outcomes

This project renews previous flawed methods for measuring psychological sex differences and genderedness and employs these novel methods to examine hotly debated research questions on sex and gender. The “gender-equality paradox,” which posits that men and women are more different from each other in more gender-equal countries, receives a thorough examination across 60 countries and 80,000 individuals. The renewed methods are also used to examine whether prototypical masculine men and feminine women exist across cultures, whether femininity and masculinity matters in heterosexual relationships among Finnish and Chinese participants, and whether socioeconomic background is associated with the genderedness of Finnish adolescents. Publicly available software is also developed within the project. The results have direct societal impact for work that focuses on gender equality and for the normalization of psychological characteristics that are not gender-typical.