The Influence of Internet Usage on Gender Division of Labour Bias: Evidence from Chinese General Social Survey Data

Abstract

Based on data from 18,741 respondents in the 2010 and 2017 Chinese General Social Survey, this paper empirically analyzes the influence of Internet usage on gender division of labour bias by using the propensity score matching model and tests the sensitivity of the estimated results. The results show that firstly, a series of personal characteristics such as gender, age, years of education, ethnicity, political status, health status, marital status, household registration status, labour income, mother’s years of education, and family economic status will have a significant impact on whether they frequently use the Internet. Secondly, frequent internet usage can significantly reduce respondents’ agreement of gender division of labour bias, indicating that frequent internet usage can significantly improve respondents’ gender division of labour bias, and the results of Rosenbaum’s bound test and H-L confidence interval test both support the above conclusions. Thirdly, frequent internet usage can significantly reduce the recognition degree of women respondents and men respondents to gender division of labour bias, which indicates that frequent internet usage can not only strengthen women’s self-identity to a great extent but also improve men’s exclusion bias to a certain extent. Therefore, this paper puts forward some suggestions from two aspects: improving the accessibility of internet usage and guiding and controlling the content and behavior of various online media.

Internet technology usage and female employment: Evidence from a Chinese general social survey

“…The dependent variables in this study are employment status and wage income. The principles for assigning employment status (es) and wage income (wi) are referenced from Gao and Liu (2022). Employment status is assigned a value of 1 if the female respondent's wage income is not equal to 0, otherwise it is assigned a value of 0.…”

“…The independent variable in this study is internet technology usage (itu). The principle for assigning internet technology usage is referenced from Gao and Liu (2022). Internet technology usage is assigned a value of 1 when the female respondent frequently uses internet technology, otherwise it is assigned a value of 0.…”

“…The moderating variable in this study is years of education (yoe). The principle for assigning years of education is referenced from Gao and Liu (2022). Specifically, when the female respondent has received no education, years of education is assigned a value of 0.…”

Higher education, internet usage, and Chinese female’s identification with patriarchal perspective: An empirical analysis considering moderating effect

“…Control variables. Based on the reference of existing studies [Gao, 2021b;Liu et al, 2021;Gao and Liu, 2022] and the actual design of CGSS, this study combines age (Age, actual age of the respondent female), household registration status (HRS, respondent female's household registration status, rural household = 1, urban household = 0), marital status (MS, respondent female's marital status, married = 1, unmarried = 0), annual labor income (ALI, actual annual labor income of respondent females), and household investment activities (HIA, whether Цифровая социология / / Т. 6 , № 1 2023 г.…”

“…In addition, it is also important to note that Chinese society has entered the digital era, and internet technology, as the underlying technology of various digital technologies, has profoundly changed the way of people's thinking and living [Gao, 2021a]. And some studies have shown that internetet usage can significantly improve Chinese females' gender competence perspectives and gender division of labour bias [Gao, 2021b;Gao and Liu, 2022]. It is worth considering whether the Internet intensifies or inhibits the spread of patriarchal culture, a factor that few studies have taken into account when studying patriarchal culture in current Chinese academia.…”