Part 1
Reflection on the role of one’s culture is essential in generating knowledge on cultural intelligence. In most cases, I reflect on the role of my African American culture. The African American culture has evolved over centuries to what it stands for today. We are spiritually orientated and derive this orientation from our heritage in the Americas. We are proud of our race as demonstrated through our dressing, songs, dance, and other practices that are aimed at creating unity and knitting the community together.
Like other races, our culture shares the universal human behaviors like other people. For instance, we cry when the occasion calls for crying. In a nutshell, the African-American culture shares the same basic emotional expressions that arise out of the human experience. We share the basic biological and if not physiological necessities like other universal human beings. Exceptional situations may dictate how human behave but the basic things are not different from other cultures.
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In our culture, we have strong cultural values like unity of the family and kinship ties that define our family relationships. The adaptability and flexibility of role play in the African-American culture is evident in how women and men change roles when the need arises. We believe that cohesion is a basic value that defines our culture. We celebrate our culture based on the systems that we have instituted and value seeking of new knowledge. In our culture, the overriding assumption is that a family must stay together, and its institution is core to the generational development of its members. While my personal differences as part of my culture have manifested in many instances, I do not recall situations where they were idiosyncratic by others or my personal beliefs characteristics and norms.
Part 2
First impressions count and my initial impression when I read the words “Masculinity” and “Femininity”, I consider all the positive aspects attributed to either gender; male or female. However, a deeper analysis may reveal that these are socio-cultural categorizations of how males and females in a certain cultures carry out their everyday activities. I believe that these are concepts that are socially and culturally advanced in different communities aimed at projecting how culture views both men and women. For instance, in most societies in the world, values associated with masculinity have always been projected as superior to those associated with the opposite; femininity. Therefore, as one is born right from their early age, they are encouraged to perform particular roles associated to their gender. Imperatively, in a competitive contemporary society, masculinity is associated with strong values like achievement, heroism material reward for success, and assertiveness. On its part, femininity prefers cooperation, caring for the weak and good life.
Masculinity and femininity surface in organizations in different ways. For instance, a leader’s culture is shaped by the kind of social environment that they consider better. A leader from a masculine perspective believes that people live to work while the one from a feminine perspective thinks that work must occur in order to live. In most cases, masculinity and femininity continue to impact how organizations are run with studies indicating that increased leadership roles played by women lead to increment in the rate of returns for a company. Therefore, a leader’s culture, belief system, values and style preferences are fundamental in their ability to have effective interplay between femininity and masculinity in organizations. Imperatively, they must create a balance between the two approaches because each has its strengths and limitations. The balance ensures that the leaders and organizations get more of these strengths and less of the limitations of each approach.
Different cultures, like the African American culture, are defined from the masculinity and femininity dimension or framework. From this perspective, I strongly believe that my culture of origin is defined from femininity dimension as opposed to the masculine one. For instance, the gender roles overlap as men, just like women, are expected to be tender, modest and focus on the quality of life as opposed to being assertive and having a connection on material achievements. Further, success in our culture is not based on material angles but on character and development of strong values in the community. The framework emphasizes the need for cooperation between the males and females. While these are at the core of the community, men are expected to assert their positions and have clear focus in all activities. Therefore, I would say that my culture has some distinctions but not very explicit as demonstrated in other cultures.
The masculinity and femininity findings from the research demonstrates that Mexico is a masculine society while the United States is a feminine country where gender roles overlap with both men and women carrying out responsibilities without any gender hindrances. However, in Mexico, gender roles are clearly distinct and females perform societal roles expected of them while males remain assertive, task-focused and leaders at family level. Imperatively, in Mexico, leaders propagate a position that fundamentally advances their perspective. Further, the country does not have many women in leadership positions because of the masculine perspective taken by many corporate decision makers. It suffices to note that such a position has implications on the leadership since the leaders may not benefit from the strengths of the feminine approach.
