Attitudes Toward Women in Taiwan and China

Abstract

The goals of this article are to review published data from both English and Chinese sources on current attitudes toward women in Taiwan and China and to discuss issues in cross‐cultural research that may affect the discovery and reporting of effects. Chinese women in both countries, when compared to men, had more liberal attitudes toward women, but women in China had more traditionally oriented attitudes than women in Taiwan. Yang's (1986) modernization theory was used to explain these results. There was also some overlap of gender roles in both cultures, with some traditional masculine (or feminine) roles played by the other gender. We propose that modernization may lead not only to greater gender equality but also to changes in the nature of gender roles, leading to greater gender‐role overlap, in which it is advantageous for both men and women to have less distinctive gender‐role characteristics. Finally, issues of construct validation, response sets, and alternative approaches to scale development are addressed, and suggestions for future research are offered.

Young Women in Today’s Taiwan: Relation of Identity Status and Redemptive Narration to Psychological Well-Being

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Factors Associated with Peer Sexual Harassment Victimization Among Taiwanese Adolescents

“…Such a gender ideology is conveyed to Taiwanese youngsters via family, school and peer group, within which men are taught to be strong, powerful and tough (Chu 2003;Lee 2007). Although previous studies have shown increasingly egalitarian gender roles among local people as a result of westernization (Chia et al 1997), sexism remains salient in Taiwan with its cultural roots . Such findings reveal a potential hotbed for sexual harassment to grow.…”

Children's Sex-Stereotyped Self-Socialization Through Selective Exposure to Entertainment: Cross-Cultural Experiments in Germany, China, and the United States

“…Germany comes closest to a target status of social egalitarianism of the sexes, followed by the United States, and then China. 1 Interestingly, women in China are even more traditionally oriented than Chinese men, who are expected to be very polite with very gentle manners (Chia, Allred, & Jerzak, 1997), whereas aggressiveness is part of the Western male stereotype (e.g., Herrett-Skjellum & Allen, 1996). These cultural differences might be reflected in children's self-socialization patterns.…”