Gender Revolution in Kazakhstan? Implications for Fertility Intentions

Abstract

The gender revolution perspective on the association between gender equality and fertility has been widely applied to the contexts of the developed countries both in Europe and East Asia. This study explores the applicability of the perspective to the context of Kazakhstan, which has relatively good progress in the first half of the gender revolution but is not necessarily developing the second half as in other contexts that have been studied previously. The study explored whether fertility intentions are positively associated with gender egalitarian attitudes or division of labour in the home for women who are in the labour force. In addition, whether alignment between attitudes and division of labour in the home was associated positively with fertility intentions was also explored. More egalitarian gender ideology and more equal sharing of domestic work were negatively or not at all related to fertility intentions in Kazakhstan. These results can be interpreted to mean that an unequal division of labour in the household may be taken for granted in the culture of Kazakhstan and may correlate somewhat with values that promote family expansion, regardless of whether women are in paid employment.