New research from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bern sheds light on why most people believe that women and men differ in their personalities and skills. The team evaluated data from various countries at two points in time: 1995 and 2023. This study reveals that the strength of the stereotypical beliefs reflects the extent to which women and men occupy different social roles in homes and workplaces in their society.
Bern, Jan 08, 2026.- People hold gender stereotypes, which are beliefs indicating the attributes that are typical of women and men. Understanding how the social structure of a society informs these gender stereotypes is critical because they can foster biases against individual women and men when they deviate from these stereotypes.
An international team of researchers, led by Dr. Christa Nater and with the participation of Prof. Dr. Sabine Sczesny of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bern, has investigated gender stereotypes across world nations. The findings show that although these beliefs are generally consistent across nations, they are responsive to the specific status and position that women and men hold in a specific nation. This new research is now published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Public opinion polls from around the world
The findings derive from public opinion polls conducted in 22 nations in 1995 and in 40 nations in 2023, which asked more than 25,000 respondents about the typical traits of women and men. “The findings are notable because they represent all continents as well as nations that differed widely in gender equality,” says Christa Nater, first author of the study.
What women and men do in the labor force matters for stereotypes
Results show that in all nations, most poll respondents reported that men are the more agentic gender, displaying qualities such as ambition and courage, and that women are the more communal gender, displaying qualities such as affectionate and socially skilled. For competence qualities such as intelligent and creative, respondents in most of the surveyed nations reported that women and men are equal. Yet, the strength of the beliefs that men and women are different reflects the extent to which the genders usually occupy different types of social roles in homes and workplaces in each society. For example, the belief that women are more communal than men is more common in nations where women are more concentrated in care and service occupations. Also, the belief that women and men are equally competent is more common in nations where women gain more university degrees.
The vicious cycle of stereotypes and gender inequalities
“Understanding the origins of gender stereotypes and the circumstances under which they change is important because stereotypes affect how people react to individual women and men”, says Christa Nater. “Even though these stereotypes are relatively adequate and useful heuristics for everyday life, they also yield unfair biases by obscuring individual differences among people of the same gender.” As Christa Nater explains, “Stereotypes can make atypical individuals seem not only surprising but objectionable and can lead to negative evaluations of, for example, the woman who is a superb engineer of space rockets and the man who is an exceptionally caring teacher of young children”. According to the researchers, the findings of this new study indicate that the distribution of women and men into social roles is crucial to gender stereotypes. “Therefore, the frequent demand to eradicate these stereotypes, such as by the #EndGenderStereotypes campaign from the European Union, is likely to achieve success only with equalization of the position of women and men in a society”, Christa Nater concludes.
Publication details:
Nater, C., Miller, D., Eagly, A. H., & Sczesny, S. (2026). Gender stereotypes across nations relate to the social position of women and men: Evidence from cross-cultural public opinion polls. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 122, e2510180122.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2510180122
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2510180122