Gender Differences in Gender-Role Attitudes: A Comparative Analysis of Taiwan and Coastal China

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated that women are more likely than men to support egalitarian gender-role attitudes (Brewster and Padavic 2000; Katsurada and Sugihara 1999; Mason and Lu 1988; Rice and Coates 1995; Wilson and Smith 1995). While considerable attention has been paid to country differences in gender-role attitudes associated with women’s—especially married women’s—employment at the individual and societal levels, the industrialization hypothesis used in the previous studies has, however, yielded inconsistent results (Haller and Hoellinger 1994; Alwin, Braun, and Scott 1992; Baxter and Kane 1995; Crompton and Harris 1997; Hsieh and Burgess 1994; Panayotova and Brayfield 1997; Scott and Duncombe 1992). Several issues have remained unexplored. The first is a theoretical explanation for attitudinal gender differences varying by society when considering non-economic social forces, such as social-political ideology, national policy, and other institutional forces. The second is the extent to which factors corresponding to gender socialization at the individual, familial, and societal levels structure female and male attitudes differently. The third is national comparison focusing on non-Western populations; previously, attention has focused on Western societies.

Gender Role Attitudes: Who Supports Expanded Rights for Women in Afghanistan?

“…Ethnic Pashtun background is a strong inhibitor of Afghan women's gender liberalism, but again, education and exposure to the urban environment mitigates some of the effects of that traditional ethnic programming. Our results propose that any theoretical expectation that gender self-interest (Tu and Liao 2005) alone will drive gender differences in gender role attitudes in Afghanistan is too simplistic. The reality is clearly much more complex.…”

“…We test a straightforward hypothesis derived from extant literature on gender role attitudes (Tu and Liao 2005), as follows: H 1 : Afghan men and women will differ in their gender role attitudes: women will express more liberal views toward gender roles than their male counterparts.…”

“…Conceived exclusively from the prism of group self-interest (Tu and Liao 2005), the answer to this question would be both simple and sacrosanct. Afghan women endured untold hardship under the Taliban regime (Moghadam 2003), which was truncated by the U.S invasion in 2001.…”

Gender Role Egalitarian Attitudes Among Chinese College Students

“…The current study was an attempt to extend Oppenheimer's hypothesis of career and marriage and to examine the relationships between gender role attitudes and career choice and anticipated age of marriage among Chinese college students. Because gender role attitudes are positively related with education (Tu & Liao, 2005) and age of role entry for work and family roles (Marini, 1985), and role entry for work is negatively related with homemaking commitment or interest in having a family and raising children for women (Farmer, 1985), it would be logical to postulate that gender role attitudes would predict family orientation such as age of childbearing and desired family size among Chinese college students.…”

“…To investigate American and Chinese college students' predictions of people's occupations, housework responsibilities, and hobbies as a function of cultural and gender influences, Zhou, Dawson, Herr and Stukas (2004) discovered that college men and women responded similarly to gender information in predicting people's roles in society, home, and personal life. Moreover, a recent study by Tu and Liao (2005) shows that (1) both Chinese and Taiwanese women held a more egalitarian gender role attitude than did Chinese and Taiwanese men;…”