Gender Attitudes and Modernization in Italy: The Persistence of Social Class

The theory of modernization asserts that as a society attains significant levels of existential security, people become more receptive to adopting new social norms that match emerging post-materialist , such as gender equality (Inglehart, 2008; Inglehart & Norris, 2003). The rise of secularization, increased educational attainment, greater participation of women in the workforce, and elevated divorce and single motherhood rates have catalyzed a movement towards gender equality values (Inglehart, 2018; Shorrocks, 2018; Emmenegger & Manow, 2014). Consequently, the proportion of individuals embracing egalitarian or progressive views, advocating against gender-based segregation within and outside the household, has significantly grown (Inglehart, 2018). This demographic now surpasses in various national settings those adhering to conservative or traditionalist beliefs favoring gender-specific roles, where women are predominantly assigned caregiving responsibilities (Pavolini and Scalise, 2022; Giuliani, 2024).

An important but still underexplored analytical dimension of this phenomenon relates to geography and regional differences (Lomazzi, 2017). When considering the Italian case, these elements are particularly relevant, as the country exhibits marked differences between North and South.To explore these dynamics, this present study utilizes data from the 7th wave of the World Values Survey (WVS) and performs bootstrap linear regression and dominance analysis, with clustered standard errors.

Results show that while – consistently with modernization theory – age, gender, education, and religiosity are correlated with more egalitarian attitudes, the urban-rural continuum – an essential component of classical modernization theory – appears less relevant. Instead, the occupational class of employment is a significant predictor of progressive gender attitudes, especially among higher-skilled individuals such as managers and professionals. Specifically we observe that education and social class mediate the relationship between gender attitudes and town size. These findings challenge certain assumptions of modernization theory and underscore the importance of class-based analyses in understanding the evolution of gender attitudes in Italy.