The aim was to test the universality of the gender-specific pattern found in studies with Western respondents, namely that men report more powerful emotions (e. g. , anger), whereas women report more powerless emotions (e. g. , sadness, fear).
The authors expected the strength of these gender differences to depend on women’s status and roles in their respective countries, as operationalized by the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM; United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 2002).
Overall, the gender-specific pattern of women reporting to experience and express more powerless emotions and men more powerful emotions was replicated, and only some interactions with the GEM were found. Do men and women live different emotional lives, and do they experience and express their emotions in different ways, or with different frequency or intensity? To date, many studies on gender differences in emotion have been conducted to answer this question, and several reviews of this research have been undertaken (e. g. , Brody & Hall, 1993; Fischer, 1993, 2000; Manstead, 1992; Shields, 1991, 2000).
