Fractured modernization: cultural and structural predictors of attitudes on gender equality

ABSTRACT

As modernization has become globally valued, the topic of gender equality as a human right has been taken up across the world. In a simultaneously individual and national-level analysis, we sought links between citizens’ views on gender equality and their social and economic conditions, as well as relationships with factors concerning religion. With data generated from the World Values Survey-Wave 6, and from the UIS database maintained by the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, we analyzed a sample of 68,633 respondents from 53 countries. Results supported our hypothesis that positive views of gender equality are associated with modernized, non-Islamic civilizations whose upper social classes endorse gender equality, and which feature strong income, higher levels of employment, and less religiosity at the individual level. Our study also showed moderating roles being played by modernization and Islamic civilization in the relationship between religiosity and gender-equality attitudes. Our results call into question modernization theory's claim for a linear path between modernization and widespread gender equality over time. The results further indicate a need to analyze how nonuniformly modernized countries, divergent with regard to their citizens’ religiosity, might achieve gender equality.