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The goal of this short article is to emphasize the ways in which the quantitative dimensions of language could help multinationals and foreigners in general to understand gender roles at the individual and society levels. Having an easy tool that captures gender roles but is not affected by current socio-economic cycles is crucial for preventing mistakes when conducting international activity. In this way, grammatical gender marking is important because of how the most significant aspects of culture in any society are gender roles. Without understanding the expected gender roles inherent in their counterparts and/or host societies, foreigners can make mistakes that can be costly at the individual and/or organization level. The roles of women and men in society have affected every civilization without exceptions via the cultural values and practices attributed to their gender. All of the major seminal studies of survey-based cultural dimensions include a dimension of gender (e.g., Hofstede, 1980) to highlight the importance of being aware of gender roles during business transactions. Moreover, because gender roles are so controversial and important in most societies, taking the wrong approach (from the viewpoint of the host society) may increase tension and conflict that could negatively impact the organization' goals and outcomes.
In recent years, a new quantitative tool emerged to capture gender roles in society based on grammatical gender markings in the linguistic structures of a language. The quantified dimensions of culture are important for academic research in the IB field, but nonetheless it is important for practitioners to have an objective and easy tool to rely on as the base for understanding gender roles in host societies. In particular, language has a significant impact on markets and organizations, and the grammatical gender marking method of evaluating gender roles in society quantifies gender structures in such a way that it can be used by academics in empirical research but can still be used by practitioners to identify the gender roles effecting foreigner counterparts and host societies.
Grammatical gender markings have a few major advantages over the traditional survey-based dimensions of culture. First, survey-based instruments are susceptible to severe endogeneity problems through the impact of current socio-economic conditions. Conversely, linguists largely agree that the grammatical gender structures of a language are among the most stable...