Abstract
By investigating deep-rooted cultural norms, this paper explores whether and how traditional gender role attitudes impact income gaps between men and women and identifies causal effects via instrumental variable and other causal inference methods. Based on data from the Chinese General Social Survey in 2013, the results show that traditional gender role attitudes have a strong negative effect to the earnings of women but have no significant effect on men’s incomes. Through Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, this research finds that the different effects of gender role attitudes on the incomes of men and women appear to play a prominent role in causing the gender gap in earnings. In addition, gender role attitudes have an indirect and broad effect on gender income inequality through educational attainment, labor force participation, working hours, and occupational status. These results provide us with a new perspective for understanding the persistence and mechanisms of gender income stratification under educational equalization and have implications for gender equality policies.
Highlights
Gender inequality in China has drawn widespread concern in the context of social system transition and structural change
This paper primarily focuses on the social economic consequences of gender role attitudes, which constitute the influencing mechanisms of income and gender inequality
This outcome implies that traditional gender role attitudes in Chinese society and especially those of men have not changed substantially with modernization
Summary
Gender inequality in China has drawn widespread concern in the context of social system transition and structural change. Standard errors are clustered by township (subdistrict) ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, and *p < 0.1 (two-tailed test) variables that measure factors that affect labor force participation, including gender role attitudes, education level, marital status, and whether an individual has children aged 6 and below.13 The regression results show that (model 5) the detrimental influence of traditional gender role attitudes on women’s incomes remains robust with an additional 798 censored samples.
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