Traditional family and women's condition: The reciprocal perception of Turkish and Italians

Community psychology considers gender as a central organizing category for understanding power imbalances and directing social change. The geopolitical events of these last years are heightening the contraposition between Islamic and Western countries with significant effects on ethnic prejudices, including the perception of gender roles and women's condition. The present study focused on two different Mediterranean countries, an Islamic and Eastern one, i.e., Turkey, and a Catholic and Western one, i.e., Italy. It aimed at investigating the reciprocal perception concerning family and the women's condition in the two states. Participants were 400 university students, both Turkish (N=199) and Italians (N=201). We performed 2 (Italian vs. Turkish) x 2 (Italy vs. Turkey) mixed ANOVAs for repeated measures testing the significance of the differences between rater countries and rated countries. Findings demonstrated an interesting “mirror effect”: Turkish and Italians perceived their home country in similar way, and similarly different from the country of comparison. Implications are discussed.