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Is being gender nonconforming distressing? It depends where you live: gender equality across 15 nations predicts how much gender nonconformity is related to self-esteem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2020

Marcel Zentner Open the ORCID record for Marcel Zentner [Opens in a new window]  and
Christian von Aufsess
Marcel Zentner*
Affiliation:
University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
Christian von Aufsess
Affiliation:
University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
*
Author for correspondence: Marcel Zentner, E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Background

Individuals exhibiting gender nonconforming behaviors experience low self-esteem and a number of other mental health conditions, including elevated suicide risk. Most of the relevant evidence is confined to US studies, however. Adopting a cross-national approach, we examined the pervasiveness of the psychological burden associated with gender nonconformity. Because self-esteem is sensitive to the fulfillment of societal expectations for gender conformity, we reasoned that the relationship between gender conformity and self-esteem ought to decrease as societies become less restrictive in their gender norms.

Methods

To test this proposition, we conducted two studies including 18 national samples from 15 countries varying in gender equality. Participants responded to an online survey that included measures of gender conformity and self-esteem (N = 4486).

Results

Using multilevel analyses and meta-analytic statistics over the samples of both studies, we found that as gender equality increased, the association between gender conformity and self-esteem decreased.

Conclusions

The results suggest that rather than being inherently noxious, gender non-conformity becomes detrimental to self-esteem when it clashes with restrictive gender role norms that are enacted by the macrosocial context. We suggest that previous findings on psychological problems related to gender nonconformity be considered within a broader macrosocial context that may constrain people's freedom to move against gender role norms.

Keywords

Cross-culturalgender inequalitygender nonconformitygender rolesself-esteem
Type
Original Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 52 , Issue 10 , July 2022 , pp. 1857 - 1865
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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