article · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
Beliefs regarding gender roles are formed through social learning, yet accounts of gender socialisation have remained separate from broader theories of evolved social learning strategies. To investigate this dynamic, a field experiment evaluated how social information about gender is shared among young men within an urbanising Tanzanian community. Young men interviewed in the presence of their peers expressed less support for women's empowerment than those questioned in private. This pattern suggests individuals may strategically alter or misrepresent their views to align with an assumed peer disapproval of empowerment. Furthermore, participants interviewed before community elders or highly educated urban men also stated lower support for women's empowerment compared to private interviews. Qualitative findings indicated that participants prioritised perceived similarities over differences with urban men, illustrating complex peer dynamics in cultural evolution.
Understanding how social pressure shapes stated attitudes is essential for addressing gender inequality. The findings reveal that private support for women's empowerment may be masked in public settings to match perceived community expectations. Recognising this gap between personal views and public performance helps organisations better assess community norms and tailor gender equality initiatives more effectively.
The abstract does not indicate a direct commercial application pathway, as this is early-stage behavioural and cultural evolution research that primarily offers methodological insights for social researchers and policy organisations studying gender socialisation.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
Beliefs about gender roles are widely understood to be acquired via social learning. However, accounts of gender socialization remain disconnected from a growing literature on evolved social learning strategies. We implemented a novel field experiment to elucidate how social information on gender is produced and transmitted among young men in an urbanizing Tanzanian community. Men interviewed in front of their peers reported lower support for women's empowerment compared to men interviewed privately. We interpret this finding as indicative of men modifying or strategically misrepresenting beliefs to match an assumed lack of support for women's empowerment among their peers. We also found that men interviewed in front of community elders, assumed to hold relatively patriarchal beliefs, reported relatively low support for women's empowerment. However, contrary to our expectations, men interviewed in the presence of highly educated urban men, assumed to be more supportive of women's empowerment, also reported lower support than when interviewed privately. Supporting qualitative data suggests that our assumptions about our comparison groups may be somewhat naive, with participants emphasizing similarity rather than differences between themselves and those from the city. We discuss the implications of our results for our understanding of gender socialization from a cultural evolution perspective. This article is part of the theme issue 'Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures'.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2024.0267
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
