Gender inequality and subjective well-being amongst professional women in East and Southeast Asia: a study of eight societies

Abstract

ABSTRACT The dynamic combination of an increasingly progressive gender revolution in modern Asia and cultural characteristics that include the hierarchisation of gender, especially in East Asia, has the potential to shed valuable light on women’s search for gender equality and their well-being. This study of three East Asian (South Korea, Taiwan, Japan) and five Southeast Asian societies (Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, total n = 8,022) examined the desire for more gender egalitarianism amongst professional women in Asia, set against the reality of persisting gendered practices at the intersection of work and family. Findings show that a mismatch between egalitarian gender ideology and traditional practice around household labour has deleterious effects on the subjective well-being (happiness and life satisfaction), especially of professional women in South Korea. That the mismatch is most clearly seen in South Korea (and, to a lesser but still apparent degree, in Japan, Taiwan or any of the Southeast Asian societies), suggests a complex picture of unequal and situationally unique gender relations within East Asia as well as across East and Southeast Asia.