Links between Gender Role Attitudes and Fertility in the Selected European Countries during 1990-2017

Fundamental fertility changes in developed countries and persistently low fertility rates for the past a couple of decades were increasingly being interpreted using different measures of gender revolution (McDonald 2013; Goldscheider et al. 2015). The focus is on the relationship between different dimensions of the gender revolution and fertility in Lithuania, Sweden, Estonia, Austria, France, and Italy from 1990 to 2017.

Data and methods. The analysis is being done using nine datasets from five international surveys (European Values Study, International Social Survey Programme, Generations and Gender Programme, European Social Survey, and Population and Policy Acceptance Study) representing six European countries – Austria, France, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania and Sweden. Relations between gender role attitudes and fertility is analyzed using index of gender role attitudes, models of gender role attitudes are developed by using cluster analysis and afterwords included in the logistic regression models.

Results. In the long-term perspective, the changing attitudes towards gender roles are not unambiguously related to childbearing. There can be variations not only in the links between fertility and gender equity within different countries, but also differences in the direction of change. On a micro level, childbearing depends more on how the ongoing changes in attitudes towards the gender roles are accepted, rather than on the stages and progress of the gender revolution.