Conversation with dr hab. Natasza Kosakowska-Berezecka, prof. UG
Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Psychology, Division of Intercultural Psychology and Gender Psychology
How do you understand the idea of sustainable development from the perspective of your scientific experience?
From a development perspective, the privilege of, for example, being born in a prosperous country is pure chance. Not everyone is so lucky. The sustainable development goals show what to do to ensure that people born in circumstances that don’t provide them with constant security and comfort have an opportunity to achieve such conditions. The place of birth is one of the potential limits to our chances of development. Others include belonging to specific social groups that we perceive through the prism of stereotypes – their content may also limit access to power, influence or simply information. Belonging to ethnic, national or sexual minorities, being a woman, or a person with a disability – these are some examples of social groups belonging to which is associated with certain challenges that an individual must face in order to achieve e.g. professional success. For example, people who speak with an accent indicating that they come from a national or ethnic minority are perceived as less educated, less intelligent and less trustworthy. Women, in turn, earn 20% less than men in the European Union, despite having similar competences and levels of education. Sustainable development talks about what to do to ensure that various factors and circumstances counteract the negative impact of the existence of such stereotypes on the quality of life of individuals.
The starting point for our conversation are the sustainable development goals, including the fifth goal, i.e. gender equality. What do you think gender equality is? What socio-cultural aspects does it pertain to?
Maybe I’ll start with what gender equality is not. Gender equality is not about women becoming men and men becoming women. It’s not a change of roles – it’s the creation of a space in which people, regardless of their gender, can fully use their potential, develop talents, and have equal opportunities to achieve goals in all areas of life. Gender equality is the moment when we have similar representation of women and men in various bodies: whether in decision-making bodies of power, full of economic gratifications, in the education system, in the health service, or in a group of people benefiting from various social privileges. We also talk about the domestic sphere here. Gender equality is achieving a similarly committed presence of women and men in various aspects of social, political, but also local, domestic and family life. We talk about gender equality when we want women to have a chance to hold the highest political positions, but also when we make sure that both men and women have the opportunity to care for children. Finally, we talk about a situation in which our various life needs can be fully met, regardless of whether you are a woman, a man, or you identify with neither gender. This is the moment when a certain label does not bother you – on the contrary – it gives you the opportunity to be a happy, healthy and safe person.
The sustainable development goals show what to do to ensure that people born in circumstances that don’t provide them with constant security and comfort have an opportunity to achieve such conditions.
Let’s try to embed the topic of gender equality in the reality of our country and society. What problems require special attention?
It depends on how we measure gender equality. We can start with a legal measure, from the most general category, e.g. analysing whether men and women are legally protected in situations in which they are discriminated against because they have this gender rather than the other – e.g. they earn less or don’t have access to education or health services, or are excluded from certain professions.
The law can be considered a kind of litmus test – an indicator monitoring whether women and men have equal rights, opportunities and privileges. In our country, if it were not for the very restrictive anti-abortion law that controls women’s procreation, or the earlier retirement age for women, we could even talk about certain equality of women and men before the law. But this is debatable.
In turn, another indicator that can help us understand what determines gender equality is the measurement of social attitudes towards women and men and the expectations we set up for them and the values we assign to the roles they fulfil. And here it’s worth mentioning stereotypes, from which inequality often begins. Stereotype – prejudice – discrimination is a very important equation in social psychology. It means that if we have certain stereotypes, i.e. simplified and general knowledge about a group (e.g. men manage people better than women), we will most likely be biased towards a woman leader, and when we have to choose either a woman or a man for a given managerial position (with the same qualifications), we will choose a man – because we have such a stereotype of women and men. Discrimination starts with a stereotype that we have in our heads without even being aware of it. Take, for example, another statement: “A man’s role is to earn money to maintain his household, and a woman’s role is to take care of children”. This statement measures the extent to which we support the traditional division of responsibilities in the family. We know from other research that as such beliefs become more prevalent in society, the overall level of gender equality decreases, as measured by, for example, the Global Gender Gap Report (an indicator measured and announced annually by the World Economic Forum). Interestingly, Poland is among the countries in Europe with the most traditional beliefs about women’s and men’s roles. Assigning roles related to household duties mainly to women makes it difficult for them to pursue a professional career. Similarly, assigning roles and responsibilities related to the financial maintenance of the family to men prevents them from greater involvement in family life and responsibilities. Moreover, every year the European Union publishes data showing that the more children women have, the less visible they are on the labour market, and the more children men have, the more bound they are to the labour market. Therefore, sticking to traditional roles entails restrictions in access to the labour market for women and to the family sphere for men. Poland still has a lot to do in this respect, i.e. in building openness to overcoming stereotypes and supporting women in building a professional career, and men in going on parental leave more often.
Gender equality is not about women becoming men and men becoming women. It’s not a change of roles – it’s the creation of a space in which people, regardless of their gender, can fully use their potential, develop talents, and have equal opportunities to achieve goals in all areas of life.
Are both women and men aware of their rights and ready to fight for them?
In some groups, especially among people from larger cities and with higher education, this awareness is quite high. Gender equality, managing diversity in the organisation, counteracting exclusions have been discussed for many years. I have been dealing with these issues scientifically for twenty years and I see an increasing awareness that equality is an important foundation for building a healthy work environment. I lecture at MBA (Master of Business Administration) studies, I give lectures and teach courses on effective management of diversity in organisations – more and more institutions and organisations in the sphere of business or education uphold the principle of equality and they do it not only because it’s politically correct or fashionable, but because it simply pays off – teams or organisations in which we have equal representation of women and men are more innovative, generate more income and an organisational culture based on equality strengthens the sense of security, belonging, responsibility and proactivity of employees of both sexes.
Do events such as protests after the tightening of abortion law and after the judgment of the Constitutional Court, have a strong impact on public awareness? Or are they just media hype, and ultimately, after a few months, few of the demands raised there survive in the public debate?
What drives the development of society is social change. Social change happens when we see that our reality isn’t as it should be – something bothers us, something frustrates us, threatens us and we take action to change this reality. Social change has many names and can use various tools – my tool is science: diagnosis of what it’s like, showing various data informing about the sense of discrimination of women and men or social inequalities. Next, there are educational activities that serve to show how important it is to counteract gender stereotypes, i.e. training sessions, of which there are more and more in Polish institutions, including Polish universities. Social protests are also an important tool for social change – taking action when we clearly say “no” to certain attitudes or phenomena. The black protest was about women’s rights, but let’s note that men also took part in it. It was a very important moment of social change because it turned out to be our common cause. Regardless of age and gender, people took to the streets and fought for something important – the right to make decisions about their own bodies.
This doesn’t go unnoticed. I don’t know if you remember the photos from the protest, which made an impression, especially on people from abroad. There were hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets in Poland: women and men. Protest as a tool for social change is the foundation of freedom, showing the voice of society and building commitment around the change we need and want to achieve together. We know from various studies that participating in events such as protests strengthens our sense of self-efficacy. There is nothing more inflammatory for social change than the sense of empowerment that comes from working together for a good cause. Such energy and strength stay with us for a long time. But it must be strengthened by continuing to act together.
What is the situation like at universities in terms of equality and anti-discrimination policy?
From the perspective of many years of my research and educational work, I can say that such activities appeared at universities a long time ago, but most often they took the form of grass-roots initiatives of certain groups, most often coming from the social sciences. At that time, they took the form of scientific research, raising issues of the sense of equality, justice, and quality of life in the scientific community. When we joined the European Union, various grants appeared that were supposed to support activities, e.g. equalising wages. Anyway, there were no coherent pro-equality, inclusive, anti-mobbing, anti-violence and anti-discrimination activities at the university that could improve the situation. Currently, thanks to many grants and systemic solutions, equality activities at universities have become more strategic. The result of this process is, among other things, the establishment of the University of Gdańsk Committee for Social Responsibility, chaired by Professor Ewa Łojkowska. One of the tasks of this committee is to promote equality at our University. The appointment of the Plenipotentiary for Equal Treatment, Professor Joanna Kruczalak-Jankowska, is another important signal showing that our University focuses on equality. The fact that we have the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Gdańsk, from which you come, is also the result of many years of activities aimed at promoting good university management practices. The European Union has also become an ally in various activities. It has announced that if universities want to apply for EU funding for various scientific activities, and these are large funds, they have no choice: they have to implement various equality plans, anti-mobbing and anti-discrimination standards.
And we have. As the University of Gdańsk, we have prepared such a document. A Commission for the Implementation of the Gender Equality Plan, appointed by the Rector, was also established, in which I had the pleasure to participate. A document was created that outlined a framework for action for the next two years, the aim of which was to guarantee inclusiveness and gender equality in our work environment, and we also act and support other universities in Poland and around the world in implementing the best equality standards.
If we say that someone is masculine or feminine, it’s often accompanied by specific evaluative features. Where do gender roles and specific behaviours assigned to a specific gender come from? Why does a man, in the traditional sense, have features such as courage, strength, dominance, and desire for power; in turn, a woman – sensitivity, protectiveness, and gentleness? At what stage of life do we acquire specific behaviours, learn gender roles and what are the determinants?
Why we “reach for gender” at all is an important question. Firstly, people, as social beings, have the need to categorise and divide the world according to certain patterns that enable them to tame and predict (and to some extent control) the behaviour of others. Gender is quite a graceful category because it’s quite easy to use – commonly dichotomised – and therefore it seemingly has only two categories and is most often easy to detect. In addition, there is the power of socialisation, i.e. the environment in which we grow up, which teaches us what women and men are like, what they should do and what they should avoid. We have many theories explaining where gender differences in personality and the social roles they assume come from. Here we have two main strands of research offering quite competing explanations. According to evolutionary theories, the way in which the social life of our ancestors was organised prepared women and men to achieve different adaptive goals – women took care of children, and stronger men protected them and went hunting to provide food – therefore, resourcefulness and agency evolved more strongly in men, while sensitivity and gentleness and caring for relationships developed more strongly in women.
Of course, analyses carried out within the framework of more feminist anthropological theories also tell a different version of events. Namely, most of the food provided to the tribe came from gathering, and this was what women did, therefore women were often the ones who provided most of the food and both women and men took care of the children. Times have changed, but the division remains.
However, according to the social role theory, the fact that we observe women and men in specific tasks and roles makes us attribute to them such characteristics that make their success in performing these tasks plausible. Therefore, if we see men in positions of power more often and women taking care of children, we conclude that a given gender must have characteristics that make them more likely and willing to take on such roles and fulfil them better. We therefore assume a kind of illusory correlation between what women and men do and what they can and want to do. Interestingly, many studies show that there are no differences in the social functioning of men and women – in fact, as a woman, I may be more similar to you than to my female colleague – temperament and personality may be completely genderless. Therefore, in the light of psychological research, women and men may have a very similar management style, raise children similarly effectively, or communicate with others and express emotions in like manner – but due to our social expectations, we don’t realise this.
Here, of course, we are talking about the power of our own stereotypes about binary femininity and masculinity. They potentially bring benefits to both sexes, but they are also a source of various consequences that may affect their happiness and health. Take, for example, the stereotype of masculinity: a man must be fit, tough, resourceful, competent and ambitious – so this assumption paves an easier path for them to achieve success in their professional career. As a result of the belief that “since I am tough and resourceful, I can’t show that I’m weak or need help” means that mental or physical weakness is something that men are stereotypically not supposed to exhibit – this is what our cross-cultural research in 62 countries shows.
You’ve already referred to my next question. We’ve devoted a large part of our conversation to the issue of women. Some of them actively fight for their rights, using various forms: promoting knowledge, participating in demonstrations, and joining organisations supporting women. Where is the man in all this? You are the main researcher of an international project devoted to the study of contemporary men – Towards Gender Harmony. Please say a few words about this project. How do men understand gender equality?
We are running two international projects focused on this topic. The first one is Towards Gender Harmony, in which we examine various factors that may be related to how masculinity and femininity are understood today.
More than 160 researchers from 62 countries participated in the research carried out in the Towards Gender Harmony project. This international team, which I had the pleasure of leading, analysed, using quantitative and qualitative research the contemporary understanding of masculinity and femininity, conducting research in 62 countries on all continents – it’s the first such extensive and broad study in the history of social research on this topic.
The main team running the Towards Gender Harmony project – project opening meeting at the European Solidarity Centre.
How are masculinity and femininity defined in different cultures? Most often, features considered masculine are associated with agency and domination, while features such as community are considered feminine. However, in most cultures, masculinity is something different than being a man – that is, masculinity and being a masculine man must be earned… and therefore… can also be lost. People vary in how much they believe that masculinity requires constant validation. These differences are influenced by how a person is brought up and in what social environment (family, school, peers) they grow up, and then in what environment they function as an adult man or woman (work, family, friends). The research of the Towards Gender Harmony project carried out in 62 countries around the world, has shown that beliefs about threats to masculinity are deeply rooted in the culture in which the person lives. In countries such as Kosovo, Albania or Nigeria, the beliefs that masculinity must be constantly proved through strictly defined patterns of behaviour are very strongly anchored in the minds of citizens. On the other hand, in countries such as Finland, Germany or Spain, masculinity is not so easy to undermine through individual behaviours, statements or interests. The research also shows that the higher the country’s development index and gender equality, the less strong the beliefs among women and men that masculinity is at risk and needs to be proved. It’s also important that the feeling that masculinity needs to be confirmed may encourage men to engage in not necessarily healthy behaviours that are intended to maintain their masculine status – we know that the feeling that masculinity is jeopardised goes hand in hand in men with increased risk-taking and a tendency to aggressive behaviour or supporting military actions. Therefore, examining what masculinity is and why it is threatened is important for men’s health and quality of life – the feeling of endangered masculinity has many negative social consequences. Our research also indicates that the feeling that masculinity is menaced, as a cultural belief, is associated with a number of negative consequences for men’s health – men in countries with high rates of threatened masculinity die 6 years earlier than men in countries with low rates of threatened masculinity. Similarly, endangered masculinity is conducive to risky, health-damaging behaviours.
In our next project, also financed under the OPUS grant by the National Science Centre, we are examining the relationship between teenage and adult men’s perception of their own masculinity, their mental well-being and attitudes towards gender equality.
You’ve mentioned that men, especially in certain social groups, are often afraid of establishing gender equality. How can we remedy this? Can we point to examples of societies where gender equality works as we would like it to, and both groups benefit from it?
Gender equality, whether in family, social or professional life, benefits both men and women. It’s associated with greater respect for human rights in a given country, higher levels of happiness and well-being, and better physical and mental health, as well as greater satisfaction with family relationships and economic benefits, including a higher average level of GDP. The study involved over 33,000 participants from 62 countries – both from Norway, which ranks second out of 153 countries in terms of gender equality in the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) from 2020, and Pakistan, which is the 151st in this ranking. In our research, we have found out many important relationships – for example, we have shown that regardless of nationality, the more men believe in “zero-sum” thinking, i.e. they think that the benefits for women at home, business or politics equal the losses for men – the less willing they are to support gender equality and the more likely they are to express attitudes towards women that reflect sexism.
Moreover, the higher the level of gender egalitarianism in a given country, the less likely men are to engage in activities such as signing petitions for gender equality in the workplace or supporting the promotion of women in politics or business. This “zero-sum” thinking, in which gains for women equal losses for men, remains a key barrier to further progress on gender equality. Ironically, the assumption that “her gain = his gain” is more true and should be promoted because gender equality benefits both women and men.
We also conducted another very interesting study where we asked men to check their testosterone levels. They had to measure the length of the second finger – index finger and the fourth finger – ring finger (2D:4D). If you divide the length of the second and fourth fingers, you get a certain proportion which, according to various (though not always confirmed) biological tests can potentially be an indicator of testosterone levels. After the measurement, one group of men learned that their result meant low testosterone levels (very feminine type), and the other – that they had very high testosterone levels. We then examined the men’s willingness to support gender equality using a scale that measures, for example, willingness to take part in pro-equality activities, share responsibilities with their partner, etc. In our study, we showed that the men who had “low testosterone levels” belonged to the group declaring less willingness to support equality activities and share childcare with their partners.
This is an interesting result because it allows us to answer your question directly. First of all, we see that the pressure to prove, to “be macho”, is a form of masculinity that doesn’t guarantee joint action for equal society and sustainable development. Therefore, it’s very important to show various examples of the fact that masculinity has many faces – just like femininity. That’s why it’s so important to show different models of masculinity.
Gender equality, whether in family, social or professional life, benefits both men and women. It’s associated with greater respect for human rights in a given country, higher levels of happiness and well-being, and better physical and mental health, as well as greater satisfaction with family relationships and economic benefits, including a higher average level of GDP.
Partners of the Towards Gender Harmony project are also scientists from Norway. At the end of our conversation, I would like to ask you for a comparative analysis. What are the differences in understanding gender equality and perceiving one’s role in the family and society between Norway and Poland?
One of the equality activities in which we are involved in the University of Gdańsk Committee for Social Responsibility – a group implementing the gender equality plan – is to make it easier for men to combine family and professional roles and take advantage of parental leave. We know that this is an important indicator of gender equality – not only women’s participation in political life or their access to senior positions in companies indicate progress in achieving gender equality, but also men’s involvement in family life, their balanced share of household chores and care of children testify to sustainable development.
In Poland, less than 1% of men go on parental leave. In Norway, it is almost 80%. What is the reason? This is probably partly due to unawareness that such solutions exist, but also to the fact that Norway, following Sweden’s example, has introduced a quota system – if a man doesn’t use the part of parental leave assigned to him, it is gone. Such solutions are now recommended by the European Union.
Norwegian men share housework and childcare responsibilities in a more balanced way more often than Polish men.
Norway is also a country where the sense of threat to masculinity is lower than in Poland. This is also related to the higher health level of Norwegian men than Polish men. Traditional patterns of masculinity are much less present in contemporary Scandinavian cultures. And cleaning, cooking or taking care of children are not considered as feminine as in Poland.