Seminar

Gender attitudes: do we know what we are measuring?

The measure of gender attitudes is of great interest to determine trends towards gender equity. Researchers also refer to gender attitudes to predict behaviors such as involvement in household tasks, union formation, and fertility. In this study, we would like to challenge nine items generally used in quantitative surveys to measure gender attitudes. To this aim, we conducted 18 in-depth interviews to parents with young children. Together with questions about the organization of family life, we presented items that measure gender attitudes and asked interviewees to justify their agreement or disagreement with them. Our qualitative analysis revealed the ambiguity of one of the items. We also found that items referring to children well-being are more often associated with contradictory narratives. Interestingly, this result was observed in women but not in men’s narratives. In the final part of the study, we discussed the appropriateness of gender attitudes measures, and we drew theoretical insights from women’s dilemma about children well-being.

Ester Rizzi holds a PhD from the consortium of Universities of Rome, Florence and Padua (Italy), and she is currently professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium. Ester Rizzi’s earlier research focused on the effect of age on fertility. Her present research projects are mainly inspired by her interest in gender roles and subjective well-being. Her ongoing projects are “Family transformations: incentives and norms”, “Gender identity, fertility and the suffering child”, “Care, retirement & wellbeing of older people across different welfare regimes”, and “Is paternity leave an effective policy?”. In her researches, she applied both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Date & Time

Mon, 15 October, 2018

11:00 am – 12:00 pm (AEDT)