Gender Attitudes in the World of Work: Cross-Cultural Comparison

The paper deals with factors determining work-related gender attitudes. With the spread of emancipative values the difference between gender roles becomes vaguer but is still strongly dependent upon country characteristics. While values are usually regarded as factors impacting socio-economic behavior, my research underlines a less explored aspect: they are themselves formed and changed in the process of economic interactions. The objective is to assess the role of education and job characteristics among factors determining gender attitudes in different types of countries. More specifically, I focus on the interaction effect between education and employment characteristics on micro- and macro-level. Female labor force participation rate and ratio of female to male tertiary enrollment are used as the indicators of female involvement in labor market activities. The 5^th wave of World Values Survey (2005-2008) serves as empirical base. The targeted group of population is the employed. Multilevel regression modeling is used. According to the results, work-related gender attitudes vary considerably by country. Education is a stronger predictor of gender attitudes than occupation and job characteristics. At the same time the higher occupational status and intellectual jobs and jobs with higher independence lead to more egalitarian gender attitudes. On the country-level the higher is female labor force participation rate and ratio of female to male tertiary enrollment, the more egalitarian are work-related gender attitudes in the country. In the countries with the higher women’s involvement in education and labor market activities education and job characteristics impact gender attitudes to a lesser extent. Furthermore, there is less difference in female and male gender attitudes in such countries.