Plus Ça Change ? : 1 Evidence on Global Trends in Gender Norms and Stereotypes

Abstract Gender norms and stereotypes that perpetuate inequality are deeply embedded in social and individual consciousness and, as a result, are resistant to change. Gender stratification theories propose that women's control over material resources can increase bargaining power to leverage change in key institutions, prompting a shift to more equitable norms. By extension, policies that promote women's paid employment should serve as a fulcrum for gender equitable change. Is there any evidence to support this hypothesis? Investigating this requires a means to capture gender norms and stereotypes. The World Values Survey provides just such a mechanism because it contains a series of gender questions that span a twenty-year period and includes respondents from more than seventy countries. This paper uses that survey's data to analyze determinants of trends in norms and stereotypes over time and across countries, and finds evidence that increases in women's paid employment promotes gender equitable norms and stereotypes.

[1]  Tonlieu Ludovic Lado,et al.  Sen, Amartya Development as Freedom . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. , 2001 .

[2]  L. Benería.  Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered , 2003 .

[3]  Alessandro Innocenti,et al.  Altruism and Gender in the Trust Game , 2006 .

[4]  K. Kempadoo.  Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race and Sexual Labor , 2004 .

[5]  V. Ramachandran.  Engendering Development , 1998, Indian journal of gender studies.

[6]  M. Nascimento,et al.  12. How do we know if men have changed? Promoting and measuring attitude change with young men: lessons from Program H in Latin America , 2004 .

[7]  Liliana Acero.  Textile workers in Brazil and Argentina : a study of the interrelationships between work and households , 1991 .

[8]  J. Jütting,et al.  Changing Social Institutions to Improve the Status of Women in Developing Countries , 2005 .

[9]  B. Bergmann.  Subsidizing Child Care by Mothers at Home , 2000 .

[10]  A. Eagly,et al.  Dynamic Stereotypes about Women and Men in Latin America and the United States , 2005 .

[11]  J. Lim.  The Effects of the East Asian Crisis on the Employment of Women and Men: The Philippine Case , 2000 .

[12]  J. Jutting.  Changing Social Institutions to Improve the Status of Women in Developing Countries. OECD Development Centre Policy Brief No. 27. , 2005 .

[13]  Ruud Luijkx,et al.  Human beliefs and values : A cross-cultural sourcebook based on the 1999-2002 value surveys , 2004 .

[14]  T. David.  Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint , 1995 .

[15]  F. Rosenbluth,et al.  Divorce and the Gender Division of Labor in Comparative Perspective , 2005 .

[16]  K. Kempadoo.  Sun, sex and gold: tourism and sex work in the Caribbean. , 1999 .

[17]  J. Clapp,et al.  Development as freedom , 1999 .

[18]  George A. Akerlof,et al.  Economics and Identity , 2000 .

[19]  J. Jütting,et al.  Women's discrimination in developing countries: A new data set for better policies , 2005 .

[20]  D. Dollar,et al.  Gender inequality, income, and growth : are good times good for women ? , 1999 .

[21]  N. Kabeer,et al.  The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka , 2000 .

[22]  D. Elson,et al.  The Social Content of Macroeconomic Policies , 2000 .

[23]  F. Rosenbluth,et al.  The Political Economy of Gender: Explaining Cross‐National Variation in the Gender Division of Labor and the Gender Voting Gap , 2006 .

[24]  J. Chafetz.  Feminist Theory and Sociology: Underutilized Contributions for Mainstream Theory , 1997 .

[25]  Elisabeth Prügl.  The Global Construction of Gender: Home-Based Work in the Political Economy of the 20th Century , 1999 .

[26]  Peggy Kahn,et al.  Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World , 2004, Perspectives on Politics.

[27]  Peter Augustine Lawler,et al.  A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive and Virtual Economies , 2004, Perspectives on Politics.

[28]  M. Floro.  Economic restructuring, gender and the allocation of time , 1995 .

[29]  Nilüfer Çağatay,et al.  Feminization of the labor force: The effects of long-term development and structural adjustment , 1995 .

[30]  A. Morrison,et al.  Too Close to Home: Domestic Violence in the Americas , 1999 .

[31]  V. Price,et al.  Development and application of social learning theory. , 1995, British journal of nursing.

[32]  D. Elson.  Gender Justice, Human Rights, and Neo‐Liberal Economic Policies , 2002 .

[33]  N. Folbre.  Who Pays for the Kids?: Gender and the Structures of Constraint , 1994 .

[34]  R. Blumberg.  Income Under Female Versus Male Control , 1988, Journal of family issues.

[35]  Keng‐Fong Pang.  Living Rooms as Factories: Class, Gender, and the Satellite Factory System in Taiwan , 1998 .

[36]  S. Bem.  Gender schema theory: A cognitive account of sex typing. , 1981 .

[37]  A. Diekman,et al.  Dynamic Stereotypes of Power: Perceived Change and Stability in Gender Hierarchies , 2004 .

[38]  I. Boxill.  Kempadoo, Kamala. Sun, sex and gold: tourism and sex work in the caribbean. New York: Rowan and Littlefield, Inc., Oxford, 1999 , 2002 .

[39]  R. Blumberg.  A General Theory of Gender Stratification , 1984 .

[40]  J. Andreoni,et al.  Which is the Fair Sex? Gender Differences in Altruism , 2001 .

[41]  C. Goldin.  The U-Shaped Female Labor Force Function in Economic Development and Economic History , 1994 .