Mosaic of beliefs: Comparing gender ideology in China across generation, geography, and gender

Abstract

Modernization accounts of cultural change hold that economic development drives liberalization of social values, including gender beliefs. Some comparative gender scholarship suggests that societal affluence is often accompanied by the growth of gender-essentialist beliefs, and that these beliefs coexist comfortably alongside gender-egalitarian values. The multidimensional conceptualization of gender ideology that is required to assess these competing claims has been applied so far mostly to Western societies. China is an obvious case for extending knowledge of these relationships, given its rapid economic growth and its recent history of state-imposed gender-egalitarian discourses. Applying latent class analysis to the Chinese General Social Survey (2010–2017), this study links different tenets of gender ideology in China to temporally and spatially specific histories and gendered interests. The results show that the relative importance of modernization and gender accounts depends on the generational, regional, and gendered identities being examined. Unlike in the West, moreover, egalitarian and essentialist beliefs do not always coincide in contemporary China. The friction between these beliefs reflects the resilience of male-primacy ideology.