Gender Attitudes

Outline  Cultural approaches  Why are attitudes changing in Central Europe?  Micro-level explanations of gender attitudes

The Modernization Explanation (Inglehart & Norris)  Industrialization brings women into the labor market  Educational opportunities rise for women and they begin to participate in government  The postindustrial phase brings a shift toward greater gender equality as women rise in management and gain political influence  Transition from survival to self-expression values (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?)

The Failure of Modernization Theory to Explain this Shift in Central Europe  High female employed existed already under the communist regime  Women had rather equal access to education already under communist rule  People did not have to worry about survival except perhaps in Poland

But not completely wrong  But it is true that women did not yet rise in management or politics  The industrial shift from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy with a large service sector was hindered by the communist regimes  This does not seem sufficient to explain the change

Cultural Differences?  Pfau-Effinger: two countries can have similar policies, but peple will still use them differently  In some societies men are more likely to choose father leaves than in others because they have different conceptions of the role of the father  Duncan: Gendered moral rationalities: what is morally rational is not always economically rational, for example, women might refuse daycare because it goes against their view of what is “proper”

Hakim’s Preference Theory  Individualization process means we cannot group people of one country together  In modern society we have become more individualistic  There are different groups in every country

Hakims 3 Groups  Caring group: will want to stay at home regardless of policies (about 20% of the population)  Career group: wants to have a career and is not interested in having children (about 20% of the population)  Adaptive group: will choose work or career depending on incentives

Implications of Preference Theory  We cannot achieve gender equality because men do not want to change roles, only women  In Sweden, despite policies encouring men to stay at home, few do so  Only the adoptive group can be influenced by policies  The three groups have competing interests, while men all have the same interests,  Thus, men can organize better around their interests

Criticisms  Men are stupid, but not as stupid as Hakim thinks, nor are they as homogeneous  In Sweden men are beginning to take father leaves to a much greater extent (now they take over 20% of the total leave time and almost all fathers go on leave)  Gender equality is also in the interests of many men. She just assumes men think the same, but does not provide evidence  Surveys show big differences among women in different countries  The largest group is adoptive, which means that policies in fact matter  The largest group is adoptive, which means that policies do in fact matter

Attitudes Changing in Central Europe  Slowly beginning to support more gender equality at the theoretical level  Great support for more gender equality at the concrete daily level  “Feminism” becoming more acceptable

Theoretical level: Support for Equal Gender Roles

Concrete, Daily Level:

Women’s organizations  In Poland: 133 women's organizations  50 consider themselves to be feminist (38%)  93 support gender equality (70%)  In CR: 49 organizations  6 show some support for feminism (6%)  18 show support for gender equality (37%)  1995 in CR: none openly supported gender equality, but 2 of 31 came close

Newspaper Articles in the CR  In MF there were 15 articles in 2007 using the word “feminism”  Not negative anymore, but there is a defensive tone, the need to show feminists are not radical  Typical to use the term, “I am a feminist, but not a radical feminist….”

Why this change?  The EU gave legitimacy with “gender mainstreaming”  Czechs have more experience living and studying in the West  The development of domestic gender studies  Cooperation with Western and international women’s organizations  Can we call these openings of the political opportunity structure?  Beliefs coming from communist legacy not as strong as other beliefs?

Microlevel Analysis  Age  Church  Degree of religiosity  Educational Level  Gender

Age  Generational difference: younger people have more post-modern values  Today’s women have greater career opportunities  Younger men are more interested in spending time with their children

Church and Degree of Religiosity  The Catholic Church has traditionally supported the “nuclear family” and “traditional” roles  But this traditional family only existed for a very short time in our history  In agricultural society women worked, as did children and the family was extended  Degree of religiosity is important (not in Wilcox’ article) because in a country like Poland, almost everyone is Catholic, but not everyone is as religious  In the USA evangelical pastors have been very conservative  In Poland the degree of religiosity is not significant in explaining attitudes

Educational Level  Those with a higher education are more supportive of gender equality  Women with higher education want equal chances  Men with higher education often chose partners who are higher educated and want to have careers  Educational levels are increasing, as is support for gender equality

McDonald’s incoherence theory in the industrially advanced countries the conflict between norms supporting high levels of gender equity in individual- oriented social institutions (like education system and labor market) and sustained gender inequality in family-oriented social institutions (in caring and nurturing and household maintenance) has caused fertility rates to drop.

Gender differences  Women obviously have a greater incentive to support equality  But in America more men than women supported ERA

Conclusions  Attitudes toward gender equality are becoming more positive  This is partially due to post-modernization and to the development of the international discourse  All micro factors point to an increase in support for gender equality (the new generation and higher educated are more positives as are the more secular)  Life is becoming increasingly more difficult for men who want to oppress women and hate their children