Gender Attitudes in the World of Work: Cross-Cultural Comparison

Abstract

This paper deals with factors determining work-related gender attitudes. With the spread of emancipative values the difference between gender roles is becoming more vague but is still strongly dependent upon country characteristics. While gender attitudes are usually regarded as factors impacting socio-economic behavior, my research underlines a less explored aspect: they are themselves formed and changed in the process of economic interactions. The objective is to assess the role of job characteristics among factors determining gender attitudes in different types of countries. More specifically, we focus on the interaction effect between education and employment characteristics on a micro- and macro-level. Female labor force participation rate and ratio of female to male tertiary enrollment are used as the indicators of female involvement in labor market activities. The 5th wave of World Values Survey (2005-2008) serves as the empirical base. The targeted group of the population is the employed. Multilevel regression modeling is used. According to the results, work-related gender attitudes vary considerably by country. The higher occupational status as well as more intellectual, creative and independent jobs lead to more egalitarian gender attitudes. Self-employed and part-time workers have more traditional gender attitudes. On the country-level, the higher the ratio of female to male tertiary enrollment is, the more egalitarian work-related gender attitudes in the country. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, labor force participation rate itself does not have a significant impact. In countries with more involvement of women in education and labor market activities, education and job characteristics impact gender attitudes to a lesser extent. Furthermore, there is less difference in female and male gender attitudes in such countries.

Keywords: gender attitudes, education, job characteristics, labor market, cross-cultural comparison

JEL Classification: J16, J24