Changing gender roles and the rise of paid jobs for women in the second half of the twentieth century affects not only the labour market but family life as well. The aim of the paper is to capture the differences in the opinions of men and women about the individual characteristics of work / job attributes . Two mechanisms are traditionally provided to explain gender-based differences in career preferences: a) different gender-based socialization creating a contrast between gender roles of men and women and b) the position of women in the labor market in the existing social structure. According to the model of gender socialization, men are considered to be the breadwinners, while the main role of women mostly refers to the care of children and household. Therefore, we expect that the characteristics that represent the material conditions will be of key importance for men. On the contrary, the most important characteristics for women will be the features enabling to combine work with family care related duties. The model of social structure expects the existing gender-based differences in the preferences of individual characteristics of work to reflect the differences between men and women in the labor market as well as their structural positions and their approach to the rewarding system in the workplace. Our analysis based on the European Values Study (waves 1991 - 2017) finds only minimal differences in job attribute preferences among men and women. The notion of women not willing to put as much effort into work as “the breadwinners” due to other priorities therefore seems to refer to a rather outdated gender stereotype.

Gender ideology has quickly developed as a response to fostering human rights, especially in the case of gender equality. Gender policy thus became a political and ideological instrument that subjects human rights to another contest – a new form of crusade pursued by anti-gender movements which advocate traditional and conservative ideologies against gender equality and gender theories. In this paper, we seek to track and map the recent development of anti-gender movements and their mobilisation. We apply critical discourse analysis to several doctrines of antigenderism in order to understand the global popularity and mass appeal of these movements.

In our research article, we expect that the job attitudes of men and women should converge, and their declared different preferences for job attributes should decrease. We also expect that the preference for job attributes aimed at comfortable working conditions should be closer between men and women due to the growing balance of men’s and women’s role distribution within the household. Therefore, the main goal of the research, using quantitative research methods and using data from the European Values Study (EVS), is to identify the gender differences, if any, in the preferences for external and internal job attributes across selected EU member states. In particular, we focus on the importance of work for men and women; gender differences in job attributes; the preference for external and internal job attributes; the inclination of gender stereotypes and attitudes toward gender roles division; and the comparison of gender equality and job attribute preference in the selected EU countries. Our conclusions confirmed parallels between gender stereotypes and equality among the Western, Eastern, and Southern EU member states.