Grammatical Gender Marking: The Gender Roles Mirror

This paper highlights the advantages of grammatical gender marking in capturing gender roles in society. Grammatical gender marking is a relatively new method that improves upon the previous methodology of survey-based cultural dimensions, which are susceptible to severe endogeneity problems caused by current socio-economic conditions. Conversely, linguistic structures regarding gender are stable features of a language’s grammar, making them exogenous to current socio-economic forces. Academics can use grammatical gender marking as a quantitative dimension for use in empirical research; practitioners can use it to identify the gender roles affecting foreigner counterparts and host societies.