Gender Role Attitudes in the International Social Survey Programme: Cross-National Comparability and Relationships to Cultural Values

Abstract

Differences in societal views on the roles of men and women have been addressed in many large-scale comparative studies by employing indicators of gender roles attitudes from cross-sectional surveys. Assuming that cross-country differences in gender role attitudes are linked to the prevailing cultural value orientations in each society, this study aims at investigating the association between societal views on gender roles, as measured by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), and the prevailing cultural values, as defined by Schwartz’s theory. However, to carry out meaningful comparisons, we first assessed the prerequisite of measurement equivalence between countries. The comparability of gender role attitudes is limited when using traditional methods based on the concept of exact equivalence (multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis). However, the recently established alignment optimization procedure reveals approximate measurement equivalence and suggests that the mean comparison is trustworthy. Based on these results, we correlate the national mean levels of gender role attitudes with the cultural values of embeddedness, hierarchy and egalitarianism, showing that traditional gender roles are displayed in societies emphasizing hierarchy and embeddedness while progressive views are more expressed in egalitarian societies.

Can We Compare Solidarity Across Europe? What, Why, When, and How to Assess Exact and Approximate Equivalence of First- and Second-Order Factor Models

“…The alignment optimization, which is also applicable in the Bayesian framework, has been proposed as a convenient alternative to MGCFA (Asparouhov and Muthén, 2014;Kline, 2015). Its application in real-data studies (Flake and McCoach, 2018;Lomazzi, 2018;Lomazzi and Seddig, 2020) demonstrated that it is a promising technique for scholars who aim to adopt approximate equivalence while retaining the frequentist approach.…”

“…Regarding the approximate approach to equivalence, the alignment method was used to assess invariance of the same first-order factor model across the same group of countries. Following previous studies in which the variance between groups was large (Asparouhov and Muthén, 2014;Lomazzi and Seddig, 2020), the study applied FIXED alignment, employed ML and MLR estimations, and compared the results. Furthermore, if the amount of non-invariant parameters exceeded 25%, a Monte Carlo investigation was carried out to confirm the alignment results (Asparouhov and Muthén, 2014).…”

The Gender Role Attitude Scale (GRAS) as an alternative for the crisis in measurement of attitudes towards gender roles in Latin America: A study in Chilean university students

“…The Triangle Theory of Violence (Galtung, 2016) indicates that offering different life opportunities according to sex facilitates discriminatory attitudes. Indeed, Lomazzi and Seddig (2020) conducted a cross-cultural study in which they found that 568 Beatriz Pérez Sánchez et al anales de psicología / annals of psychology, 2021, vol. 37, nº 3 (october) countries with more progressive gender attitudes also presented more egalitarian social values.…”

Generation and gender factors of the structure of value orientations

“…In the context of value analysis, mass surveys of people from different countries deserve attention [4,[7][8][9][10]. Ronald Inglehart and Wayne E. Baker used data from 3 waves of value surveys around the world found evidence of significant changes in some and the preservation of other cultural traditions [9].…”

“…Other researchers show how the behavior of people in countries with different value systems differs. For example, traditional gender roles are manifested in societies with a focus on hierarchy and affiliation, while progressive views are more pronounced in egalitarian societies [8]. It was found that society's commitment to autonomy and hierarchy is associated with a higher level of conflict between family and work [4].…”