Household Education Gaps and Gender Role Attitudes

TY - JOUR

T1 - Household Education Gaps and Gender Role Attitudes

AU - Hope, David

AU - Giani, Marco

AU - Skorge, Øyvind

PY - 2022/11/8

Y1 - 2022/11/8

N2 - Individuals’ attitudes about gender roles have been shown to be associated with a wide range of political outcomes. It is therefore crucial to better understand what shapes these attitudes. This note takes advantage of a randomized survey experiment embedded in the 2018 wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) to investigate how differences in education levels between partners influence the “gender childcare bias”—the extent to which individuals disapprove more of women working full time with children under three than men. Although male and female respondents exhibit an equally strong gender childcare bias on average, we find clear-cut evidence that the bias varies asymmetrically across the household education gap for women and men. In particular, positive household education gaps lead to a smaller gender childcare bias for female respondents, whereas the opposite holds for male respondents. Our findings are more in line with a resource-bargaining approach than a gender identity approach to the formation of gender role attitudes.

AB - Individuals’ attitudes about gender roles have been shown to be associated with a wide range of political outcomes. It is therefore crucial to better understand what shapes these attitudes. This note takes advantage of a randomized survey experiment embedded in the 2018 wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) to investigate how differences in education levels between partners influence the “gender childcare bias”—the extent to which individuals disapprove more of women working full time with children under three than men. Although male and female respondents exhibit an equally strong gender childcare bias on average, we find clear-cut evidence that the bias varies asymmetrically across the household education gap for women and men. In particular, positive household education gaps lead to a smaller gender childcare bias for female respondents, whereas the opposite holds for male respondents. Our findings are more in line with a resource-bargaining approach than a gender identity approach to the formation of gender role attitudes.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85104680611

U2 - 10.1017/psrm.2021.16

DO - 10.1017/psrm.2021.16

M3 - Article

SN - 2049-8470

VL - 10

SP - 823

EP - 830

JO - Political Science Research and Methods

JF - Political Science Research and Methods

IS - 4

ER -