Change and Continuity in Gender Ideology Across Different Fertility Contexts: Comparing Japan, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United States

Hsin-Chieh Chang , National Taiwan University

In ultra-low fertility societies, persisting traditional gender ideologies may continue to discourage educated women from having children or having to choose between career and marriage. Using the ISSP 2002 and 2012 data, four gender ideological classifications were identified with Latent Class Analysis to capture changes by gender and education across six different fertility contexts. Higher education is an important determinant for the increase of more liberal gender ideologies in transition economies like Taiwan and Poland for both men and women. Yet there appeared little changes in industrialized Japan and US. Logistic regression models indicated distinct gender ideological patterns of Taiwan and Poland. Based on the social and cross-country patterns of the LCA clusters especially the paradoxical typology, “pro-marriage and pro-work,” I end the discussions over the importance of offering a “choice” framework for women, and the dual-earner/dual-carer ideology that may boost fertility and population wellbeing, especially in ultra-low fertility contexts.

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 Presented in Session 9. Marriage, Family, Households, & Unions; Gender, Race, & Ethnicity