Gender Inequality and Well-Being: Concepts and Their Measures Are Cultural Products-A Reflection on Li et al. (2021)

Women Across the History of Cross-Cultural Psychology: Research and Leadership

Across the years as interest in culture grew in the field of psychology, women contributed to its growth by leading research into new areas, such as children’s socialization and family dynamics, and acknowledging the critical role of the social and environmental context. Moreover, women were significant partners in team-led projects, developing methodologies that have been successfully employed to study cultural similarities and differences. Women have expanded psychological research in many domains, investigating the role of culture in cognitive areas, such as perceptual learning, cognition, and languages, as well as in social areas such as cultural stereotypes, acculturation, self-construal, attributions, and human development. Women have also investigated appropriate psychometric testing for valid assessments, critical for establishing equivalence in cross-cultural research. As women’s research voices grew, they have slowly advanced into important roles in academic organizations, such as IACCP. Although men continue to dominate leadership positions in IACCP and other similar organizations, women have become more visible in recent years. Indeed, women have made important research and leadership contributions to the growth and direction of cross-cultural psychology, and they will certainly continue to do so in the future.

Self-Protection as an Adaptive Female Strategy

Many male traits are well explained by sexual selection theory as adaptations to mating competition and mate choice, whereas no unifying theory explains traits expressed more in females. Anne Campbell's "staying alive" theory proposed that human females produce stronger self-protective reactions than males to aggressive threats because self-protection tends to have higher fitness value for females than males. We examined whether Campbell's theory has more general applicability by considering whether human females respond with greater self-protectiveness than males to other threats beyond aggression. We searched the literature for physiological, behavioral, and emotional responses to major physical and social threats, and found consistent support for females' responding with greater self-protectiveness than males. Females mount stronger immune responses to many pathogens; experience a lower threshold to detect, and lesser tolerance of, pain; awaken more frequently at night; express greater concern about physically dangerous stimuli; exert more effort to avoid social conflicts; exhibit a personality style more focused on life's dangers; react to threats with greater fear, disgust and sadness; and develop more threat-based clinical conditions than males. Our findings suggest that in relation to threat human females have relatively heightened protective reactions compared to males. The pervasiveness of this result across multiple domains suggests that general mechanisms might exist underlying females' unique adaptations. An understanding of such processes would enhance knowledge of female health and well-being.