Gender Wage Gap in Local Labor Markets and Gender Egalitarian Attitude Among Men

Purpose: As exemplified in controversial findings on sex-symmetry in the perpetuation of intimate partner violence, literature on intimate partner violence has been divided whether gender has any analytic merit in understanding intimate partner violence.  Kristin Anderson (2005) has further advanced the initial sex-symmetry debate by theorizing gender with interactional and structural perspectives and moved the debate from the question of “who is more violent” to the one of “why does gender matter.”  However, implicit assumptions on the singularity of society and men as a culturally homogeneous group in the Anderson’s gender analysis framework have limited its theoretical and practical contribution to the field of intimate partner violence.  This paper empirically examines those underlying assumptions on men's gender-role attitude in light of local labor markets within the U.S.  More specifically, with theoretical and empirical insights from cultural sociology and gender stratification research, I examine whether and how race-specific, gender wage gaps across local labor markets differentially shape gender egalitarian attitude among men.  From feminist perspective, one could speculate that gender inequality in local labor markets would not be related to men’s gender egalitarian attitude because of the self-perpetuating nature of patriarchal culture regardless of labor market structures.  From cultural sociologists’ perspective, however, it is plausible that local labor market condition provokes the local emergence of cultural expectation that deviates from gender traditionalism, which in turn, might shape individual men’s gender egalitarian attitude.                 

Methods: I use the first two waves in the National Survey of Family and Households (1987-88, 92-94) for individual-level data and merge them with current population survey in order to construct gender wage gap in local labor markets.  I use census-defined, 741 commuting zones in the mainland U.S. as a proxy for local labor markets, which draws boundaries of economically-homogeneous, labor markets based on commuting patterns of census population.  I limit my analytic sample to married black/white men under age 65 (N=5,133) and conducted multivariate analyses with married couple weights using multiply imputed data.  I apply two modeling strategies that control the clustered nature of the data, including robust and hybrid regression, and examine whether results are robust to model specifications.  I include the following men’s characteristics as an individual-level control variable: relative income status, absolute income, completed education, age and current employment status.             

Results: This study reveals that men are less likely to have gender egalitarian attitude when they are embedded in a local labor market with a higher gender wage gap.  This relation was statistically significant even after controlling men’s individual characteristics, which further supports that gendered contexts of local labor market shapes men’s egalitarian attitude.         

Conclusion: One of the central components in batterer intervention programs is to reshape men’s perception and interpretation in intimate relation.  Results of my study suggest that it is critical to incorporate the structural dimension of men’s gender egalitarian attitude in revising current batterer programs with an individualistic approach.