Intercultural Differences in Gender Roles

Many issues in mate relationships are directly or indirectly concerned with gender imbalances. Gender roles have changed tremendously in the last thirty or forty years both in the United Kingdom and Russia. Both British and Russian societies have large numbers of two-earner families. In both countries, younger men are gradually becoming more involved in household tasks and some things, like child-rearing habits, never seem to change. However, attitudes to gender roles in Russian and British societies differ considerably. In modern British society, equality and loyalty is a priority between men and women. Most people in Britain, both women and men, assume that a family’s financial situation is not just the responsibility of the man. British men expect women to go to work not only for supporting the family with her earnings, but because they believe that a woman would like to fulfill her social role outside the house, considering her an equal member of society having the right to personal and career development. On the other side, men have more freedom to choose from a wide variety of roles. Modern gender roles are very flexible so that it is no longer accurate to define them narrowly and traditionally.