Investigating Public's Attitudes Toward Gender Equality in Hong Kong: Insights from a Cross-Sectional Study

Gender Equality is recognized as a Fundamental Human Right and is essential for sustainable development. In line with the pilot study in 2018, UN Women underwent a Gender Equality Attitudes Study in 2020 with 20 places, including Brazil, Denmark, Japan, Emirates, etc., and suggested that no country on earth has achieved gender equality by far, further concern about the possibility of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 5 for gender equality by the United Nations any time soon. Since Hong Kong has not been included as one of those 20 places, this study, as the first of this kind of study conducted in Hong Kong, aims to gather data and insight that can contribute to the broader understanding of global gender equality status.

This is a cross-sectional study with convenient sampling, targeting Hong Kong residents aged 18 or above. Single items were used to measure the demographics of the participants (age, gender, education level, marital status, employment status, household income, etc.). The traditional Chinese version of the Access and Control subscale (female-related questions) of the UN Women Gender Equality Attitudes Study (GAS) survey has been backward translated by researchers in our research team, which include education, work and employment, health care, marriage and family life, control over lives, control over personal finances, leadership and participation, and access to physical property. Data was collected by online survey through community networks and social platforms from Jan-Feb 2024. A supermarket gift voucher has been given to the participants after completing the survey.

A total of 1,287 responses have been received and analyzed, with 46.9% (N=603) male respondents and 53.1% (N=684) female respondents. The following results have been observed: (1) compared to the data from the Gender Equality Study of UN Women (2022), Hong Kong's gender equality awareness is higher than the average global level in every domain; and (2) chi-square analysis revealed a statistically significant difference (all p<0.001) between the responses from men and women respondents, generally speaking, men significantly overestimated the easiness with which women can access and control those above-mentioned aspects.

With the comparatively high proportion of respondents believing females were rather easy to access and control the various resources in Hong Kong, the data seem to suggest Hong Kong was achieving gender equality well. However, the difference in views between men and women might have provided a clearer picture of this, as the inequality still exists in a way that males were not able to fully and accurately understand the challenges females were currently facing. One of the limitations of the self-reporting survey was the social desirability bias, which might have contributed to the above contradiction, further implying that gender equality awareness in Hong Kong was high, as the respondents were able to pick those socially favorable choices, but were still rooms of improvement in the execution of gender equality. This result might be able to conclude that other than education, social policies would also be one of the important elements in achieving gender equality in societies.