A poll involving more than 5,000 students uncovered negative psychological implications for societies that do not strongly impose measures tackling gender quality.
The study was conducted by Kazan Federal University and also included efforts by experts from more than 24 countries including the United States, Germany, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and China. It was released in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.
“In this study we explore the related issue of sex differences in self-construal. Researchers into personality and self-construal both typically focus on variations in how respondents describe themselves on rating scales,” the international coalition of co-authors stated in their findings.
In the survey, administered to 5,320 students, men viewed themselves as more self-contained, while women felt they were more connected to others.
Among the participants, women were found to be more depressed particularly in societies with low gender equality rankings.
Moreover, in the Russian version of the poll by researchers at Kazan Federal University, close to 500 adult respondents were evaluated, nearly half of which were females and the other males.
In the Russian poll, the emergence of depressive symptoms among the students was largely dependent on cultural congruence.
“Students are such a social group prone to the risks psychological non-wellbeing because of age factors, their changing social standing, and exposedness to adaptation and information overloads,” said Olga Lopukhova of Kazan Federal University, in a news release.
“The problem of psychological wellbeing and its factors becomes more and more popular in Russian and overseas research in light of the ever complicating conditions of personality adaptation to the fast-changing values, social norms, types of behavior, and interaction,” she also stated.
The authors of the study declared no conflict of interest in the authorship or publication of the research.
