Cultural differences in gender responses to psychological well-being

The first chapter of the present book lays the empirical foundation for the investigations undertaken in the second chapter. Essentially, the first chapter establishes the validity of the two MMPI-2 scales – Gender-Masculine (GM) and Gender-Feminine (GF) – in discriminating between sex types. The second chapter moves on to applying the GM and GF scales to two discrete clinical populations in firstly, examining cross-nation variations and secondly, focussing on the differences in gender roles or sex types. Both chapters uniquely contribute to the gender literature surrounding masculinity-femininity attributes by extending cross-nation investigations to subjects with mental illnesses. The first chapter is the only investigation applying the GM and GF scales to clinical subjects, while the second chapter is a unique cross-cultural attempt to examine masculinity-femininity attributes and then explain the variation in the context of culture-specific variables. Each chapter is a paper or study in its own right, and follows on with its respective literature review, methodology, results and discussion.