In more gender-equal countries, differences between men and women are larger for innate preferences and smaller for socially constructed interests

The Gender Gap in Preferences: Evidence from 45,397 Facebook Interests. Ángel Cuevas, Rubén Cuevas, Klaus Desmet & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín. NBER Working Paper 29451, November 2021. https://www.nber.org/papers/w29451

Abstract: This paper uses information on the frequency of 45,397 Facebook interests to study how the difference in preferences between men and women changes with a country's degree of gender equality. For preference dimensions that are systematically biased toward the same gender across the globe, differences between men and women are larger in more gender-equal countries. In contrast, for preference dimensions with a gender bias that varies across countries, the opposite holds. This finding takes an important step toward reconciling evolutionary psychology and social role theory as they relate to gender.