Public Attitudes Toward Gender Equality in Employment Between Sweden and United States
Policy feedback theory argues that public attitudes toward social polices operate on a two-way street. While public opinion has some bearing on government policies, the implementation of social policies can have an effect on public perceptions. Family policy often aims to promote gender equality, particularly gender equality in employment through supporting work families. The various family policy in different welfare states raise interesting questions on how public attitudes toward gender equality vary by country and change over time.
The purpose of this paper is to understand public attitudes toward gender equality in employment in Sweden and US. Sweden is chosen for being an exemplary social democratic welfare state. Specifically, research questions are: Do public attitudes toward gender equality in employment significantly different in Sweden and US? If so, what are the possible effects of individual factors on public attitudes toward gender equality? Do these effects vary by country? Do these effects vary by cohort?
Methods:
We use three wave data from the World Value Survey (WVS) data. The sample in this study includes 3391 cases from US collected in year of 1995, 1999, and 2006, and 3027 cases from Sweden collected in year of 1996, 1999, and 2006. Measure: The survey question used to reflect public attitudes toward gender equality in employment involve the statement: "Men should have more right to jobs than women when jobs are scarce." Respondents were asked whether they "agree, neither agree or disagree, disagree." We measure the overall disagreement.
We use descriptive statistics to provide an overall picture of public attitudes toward gender equality in employment between Sweden and US and use Chi-square tests to detect if there exist significant differences. Next, we used logistic regression analysis to examine the possible effects of individual factors, including age, gender, educational attainment, marital status and employment status, on public attitudes. To further examine if these effects vary by country or by cohort, interaction terms between the key individual variables and country/cohort are included in the regression.
Results:
We found that there are significant differences on public attitudes between Sweden and US (93.3% disagreement in Sweden vs. 71.9% disagreement in US, Chi-Square=509.465, df=1, p<0.001). Results of logistic regression show that all individual factors listed above but marital status have significant effects on public attitudes toward gender equality (e.g. gender as female, Exp(B)= 1.742 p<0.001. 95% C.I. for Exp(B) = 1.524 and 1.992). Results of logistic regression with interaction terms suggest that varied effects by country and across cohorts. There is no significant change across cohorts in Sweden, while there are significant differences across cohorts in US.
Conclusions and Implications:
We found the overall disagreement with traditional view of job privilege for men while significant differences exist between two countries. Major implication is that family policy development needs to take into consideration of the change of public attitudes in US over time, in relation to factors, such as educational attainment among women, employment status, as well as the complex marital status.