New publication available - Lomazzi & Seddig: Gender Role Attitudes in the International Social Survey Programme

Lomazzi, Vera, and Daniel Seddig . 2020. “Gender Role Attitudes in the International Social Survey Programme: Cross-National Comparability and Relationships to Cultural Values”. Cross- Cultural Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397120915454

This paper investigates the association between societal views on gender roles, as measured by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), and the prevailing cultural values, as defined by Schwartz’s theory. To carry out meaningful comparisons, the study first assessed the prerequisite of measurement equivalence between countries. The comparability of gender role attitudes is limited when using traditional methods based on the concept of exact equivalence (multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis). However, the recently established alignment optimization procedure reveals approximate measurement equivalence and suggests that the mean comparison is trustworthy. Based on these results, the correlation of the national mean levels of gender role attitudes with the cultural values of embeddedness, hierarchy and egalitarianism, show that traditional gender roles are displayed in societies emphasizing hierarchy and embeddedness while progressive views are more strongly expressed in egalitarian societies.