Countries with Low Gender Equality Rankings Have More Depressed Women

Women residing in countries with low gender equality rankings tend to experience higher levels of depressive symptoms when compared to women living in countries with high gender equality rankings.

Women residing in countries with low gender equality rankings are more prone to depression.

Scientists from 24 countries and regions contributed to a big international psychological study, including the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, the United States, Greece, Germany, Brazil, Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, Argentina, Georgia, Romania, Armenia, Chile, China (with Hong Kong as a separate participant), Turkey, Italy, and Mexico. Overall, 5,320 students have been polled.

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‘Gender inequality and non-congruence play a role in promoting depressive symptoms in women.’

Associate Professor of the KFU's Department of Pedagogical Psychology Olga Lopukhova was one of the participants.

"It's well established that men and women differ in their self-perception, values, and personality traits, as well as stereotypes held with regards to representatives of one or the other sex.

Men typically find themselves more active, whereas women think of themselves as more sociable. The paper pays attention to how such effects differ between cultural groups with the focus on self-construal and depressive symptoms", she explains.

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Women experience more depressive symptoms in societies with low gender equality rankings, reveals the study.

"In all sampling groups, we cannot find proof of sex differences in a culture as a whole. Instead, we can see that women see themselves as more interdependent in the conditions of low gender equality and more independent in high gender equality. Men self-assess as more closed, whereas women feel more connected with others. There are no noticeable sex differences in the other two parameters of self-construal or in depressive symptoms," continues the interviewee.

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The Kazanian part of the poll comprised 488 respondents, 249 of whom were female and 239 male, aged from 18 to 28 years, from various universities of the city. The results showed that students with median congruence-to-culture ratios showed better psychological wellbeing. About a third of students had pronounced depressive symptoms and unsteady self-esteem, which calls for more attention to psychological support.

Congruence of the normative values of the cultural environment is found to be a cultural predictor of subjective wellbeing. Conversely, non-congruence is reveled as a predictor of not being well and more depressive symptoms.

Source-Medindia