Education and Gender Egalitarianism: The Case of China
Author: Shu, Xiaoling
Source: Sociology of Education, Volume 77, Number 4, October 2004 , pp. 311-336(26)
Publisher: American Sociological Association
Key:
- Free Content
- New Content
- Subscribed Content
- Free Trial Content
- Free Content
- New Content
- Subscribed Content
- Free Trial Content
Abstract:
This study examined Chinese attitudes toward women's careers, marriage rights, sexual freedom, and the importance of having sons using a 1991 national sample of individuals and community-level data and through a series of nested multilevel models. Education influences gender attitudes in multiple ways at both the micro- and macrolevels. Better-educated individuals hold more egalitarian gender attitudes, and this positive effect of individual education is larger for women than for men, indicating a strong empowerment effect for women. Egalitarian gender attitudes trickle down through education, as individuals in communities with high education are socialized toward more egalitarian attitudes. Community education has a larger effect toward the egalitarian direction on the attitude toward the importance of having sons than on the attitude toward women's marriage rights, indicating that change in the latter attitude occurred earlier and has now spread via education. These findings show that education is a vehicle of socialization that is used by both the domestic power elite (the Communist Party) and the Western culture.Document Type: Research article
Key:
- Free Content
- New Content
- Subscribed Content
- Free Trial Content
- Free Content
- New Content
- Subscribed Content
- Free Trial Content
Click here for Page Help