When I was young, I dreamt of becoming a TV visual designer. The animation and display of news tickers and sports match scorecards intrigued me. I know. I was already weird when I was a kid.

This was in the early 90s, so these designs were pretty basic. That changed when our local TV provider added CNN to our channels. I was shocked.

In Europe, TV shows and their visuals were relatively unobtrusive, but CNN gave us a different experience.

Even today, those differences are evident. Every time I tune in to follow the American elections, I get overstimulated by all the various things that happen on my screen.

Deep male voice: AMERICA VOTES 202x!!!
*Flash sound*
KEY UPDATE!
*Neurotic jingle continues*

Every 5 minutes, we are treated to, I mean bombarded with, another key update.

Ok, Let’s quickly have a look at the electoral map! The votes are in!

The most rural district in Arkansas votes red! Very key indeed.

Then, you start to lose attention. You are distracted by the overload of info screens. They constantly blink at the bottom half of your screen. Literally all text is in capitals, just in case it wasn’t aggressive enough.

The contrast with the Dutch elections show is enormous. A calm person is talking us through the night, and a small single-sentence news ticker in grey, and without caps, gives you a maximum of 3 to 4 headlines.

The image above is from the Dutch state TV.

We can also analyse the main commercial Dutch TV channel. The Sky News of the Netherlands. They tend to be more aggressive in their news coverage, but they still use a minimal approach to their visuals.

There are no animations; they only show a single headline that stays on your screen throughout the item. When they move the election map sidekick, the news ticker is removed so the viewer is not distracted. You can entirely focus on what the presenter is sharing.

So why is there such a difference?

This has its origins in the cultural dimension of femininity vs. masculinity. In previous articles, I’ve covered the essence of what this dimension means, so I won’t do this here again. We can, nevertheless, easily sketch these cultural differences with a few examples.

Competition

Masculine cultures gravitate towards, well, masculine gender traits. They value assertiveness, competition, and toughness. Being successful in business is often important, and so is social status.

In feminine cultures, care and tenderness are virtues. Quality of life is more important than being rich or having “Chief” in your job title.

An excellent example of how masculine and feminine countries operate is given in the book Processes Of International Negotiations by Frances Mautner-markhof.

Masculinity leads to ego-boosting behaviours and sympathy for the strong on the part of negotiators and their supervisors. Masculine cultures tend to resolve conflicts by fighting rather than compromising. Femininity leads to ego-effacing behaviours and sympathy for the weak.

Negotiations between two masculine cultures are more difficult than if at least one of the cultures is more feminine.

A historical comparison that can be cited in this respect is the difference between the solution of the Aland Island crisis between Finland and Sweden in 1921, and the Falkland crisis between Argentina and Great Britain in 1983; the first was resolved peacefully through a plebiscite, the second is still unresolved in spite of a bloody war.

Both Finland and Sweden in our research are found on the feminine side of the scale; both Argentina and Britain on the masculine side.

- Chapter: Cultural predictors of National Negotiation Styles (G. Hofstede)

Masculinity is about competition—the strongest wins. In feminine cultures, compromise and negotiation are seen as the best way forward.

A simple way to illustrate these differences is by analysing gym websites.

The homepages shown above are those of an American and Italian gym, both from masculine countries. They emphasise the individual's strength. You are encouraged to come to the gym to get a six-pack. Who doesn’t want to be alpha?

In the feminine Netherlands, gym websites take a different approach. They focus on wellbeing and collaboration, even showing a family doing a workout together. You go to the gym to improve your life's quality. Not to gain social status.

Femininity becomes apparent by:

Demonstrating some tendencies towards family and relationship (quality of life) rather than competition and domination (quantity of life) for instance showing some symbols of money, possessions, and success.
- Robbins & Stylianou, 2002

This divide is also evident when you look at the websites of some famous business schools.

Both Harvard Business School and the National University of Singapore want to establish their authority with a few indicators. Harvard does this by relying on their reputation. It uses its iconic building and shows its logo disproportionally big.

The University of Singapore informs you that they are ranked as the best school in Asia.

Both schools present themselves so that the student feels proud to study at this particular school. These schools are the best you can find. You want this university on your CV.

Universities in Thailand and the Netherlands try to convince you to join them so you can learn how to positively impact the world. They take advantage of the feminine caring trait.

Information display

In many places, men tend to make quick decisions based on facts, while women often take their time and consider feelings before deciding. In countries with a strong masculine culture, this gender difference is quite noticeable. However, in more feminine countries, men are more likely to incorporate feminine decision-making traits.

When we look at the top real estate websites in Italy and the Netherlands, we see how they share information differently. In Italy, they show a lot of facts right away, which helps with practical decision-making. In the Netherlands, it’s more about creating an emotional bond with the property. The website primarily uses photos.

Italians want to know the facts first, before exploring the details of the flat. In the Netherlands, the flat must feel right, before diving into the facts.

The national news

In Europe, each country has their own equivalent of the BBC—the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, the Italian, etc.

They go about designing their websites similar to the real estate websites.

The Nordic countries Denmark and Norway give the user very little information at once. Whitespace is used to create a visual balance. Very few photos, combined with a headline only, give the user the time to emotionally process the information.

Serbia and Greece directly give an overview of many more news items, combined with much more text.

The trend continues when we zoom in on the detail page for a single news item. The Scandinavian countries give the user full focus on the article they chose to read.

While the Balkan countries give the preference to directly give the user the option to continue reading related articles.

The trend becomes even more clear when we compare some of the leading daily news websites in a feminine and masculine country. the amount of whitespace that’s often used in the Netherlands is replaced by additional text in the US.

Interestingly, Geenstijl, the website shown at the very left top, is the Dutch equivalent of “The Daily Wire.” Their audience is very masculine and anti-woke. The design is slightly tailored for that, but they still show only one news item above the fold. The branding is pink. I’ve never heard anyone complain about this. Shouldn’t pink branding be woke? Not in the Netherlands.

In general, the ongoing culture war is not really happening in feminine cultures. These countries are freer about sexuality and medical ethical topics. Amsterdam and Bangkok are very feminine cities.

“Vertical space like candy”

One of the first projects I did when I left my feminine home country was designing a financial analytics tool. After going through the typical design thinking steps, I eventually presented the first mockups. These were some data screens with table views.

My colleagues were shocked.

“What is this? You give away vertical space like candy.”

I will never forget that phrase.

Well, there isn’t a tax on scrolling, is there?

My design was clearly too feminine for my colleagues, who mostly came from masculine countries. They started counting how many rows of data were visible on the screen and concluded that the old system was much better because it was much more information-dense.

To be fair, after I conducted my user research, I adjusted my design. The target audience was also from predominantly masculine countries. There were also practical reasons to change the screens.

My initial design choice can still be explained by cultural preferences. This becomes apparent when we analyse airport websites. Look at the arrival screens for the JFK, San Fransisco, and Rome airport. The websites show a lot of condensed information.

The contrast with the airports of Amsterdam, Stockholm, and San José (Costa Rica) is clear.

Have I just been looking for websites to confirm my bias? In fact, these were the first websites I opened (I removed O’hare because I couldn’t get the screenshot right).

Scientists Diana Cy and Milena Head have investigated the role of genders in digital behaviour. They proved that males and females have the same UX preferences in feminine cultures. However, males and females interact differently with our interfaces in masculine countries.

The feeling of an airport website is less important in the US because masculinity prefers facts. There is a desire to process as much data as possible to come to a holistic conclusion.

In Costa Rica, the user must feel well before diving into the data. The user needs to be gradually introduced to more data to not be overwhelmed.

Navigation

The same study also finds a similar trend for navigation design.

The national banks of Austria and Switzerland, both masculine countries, have elaborate navigational structures. Multiple levels are shown at once to let the user scan through all the options and give them a complete overview of what’s available.

The national banks of Denmark and Norway hide their navigation entirely so as not to distract the users from the main content. When the user opens the navigation, a more minimal design with fewer options is shown. Feminine users are more open to exploring.

Wrapping up

Masculine cultures behave in a masculine way. Disputes over islands need to be resolved by winning, job seekers manifest themselves as the best candidate, and TV channels aggressively inform you about all the news.

Feminine cultures prefer humbleness. They prefer diplomacy during times of war, job candidates are expected not to brag about their achievements, and media outlets take a minimal and calm approach.

The cultural dimension of masculinity and feminity is just one of our many cultural differences. Aggressiveness vs. timidity and facts vs. feelings are certainly aspects that are closest related to this cultural dimension.

It’s important to notice that other dimensions might also play a role in our daily lives.

Power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs. collectivism and many other social concepts also influence how we experience the world.

I will discuss these dimensions, and other ones, more profoundly in my upcoming articles.

In the meantime, and later, I invite you to follow the elections around the globe. You might be intrigued by how the various media bring us their results.

The base article of my research can be found here: