Why Gender Roles Are Blurring and Why It Matters

REVIEW BY KRISTI ANDERSEN

Maxwell School, Syracuse University

Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change around the World. By Ronald Inglehartand Pippa Norris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 240 pp., $60.00 cloth(ISBN: 0-512-82203-3), $21.00 paper (ISBN: 0-512-52950-6).

The central premise of Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris’s Rising Tide: GenderEquality and Cultural Change around the World is that culture matters. More specif-ically, if we want to understand how and why particular societies have reachedparticular levels of gender equality (which, although never precisely defined, ispresumably comprised of such things as equal pay for equal work, reproductiverights, equal educational and employment opportunities, and women’s participa-tion in positions of authority), we cannot just focus on statutory reform or theformal recognition of women’s rights. Instead, Inglehart and Norris argue, it iscritical to include cultural factors in any explanation: ‘‘the social norms, beliefs, andvalues existing in [a] society’’ that concern gender roles (p. 8). Change toward a‘‘culture of gender equality’’ is a necessary (although not a sufficient) condition forthe sorts of economic, social, and policy changes that create more egalitarian so-cieties (p. 8).

Inglehart and Norris do not test this claim directly, but they do test five prop-ositions that presumably should be true if these kinds of cultural shifts are ‘‘co-herent and predictable’’ (p. 32). Specifically, postmodern values of gender equalityshould be more widespread in more affluent societies; within any one society,egalitarian attitudes should be more common among the wealthier and better ed-ucated; women should be more egalitarian than men; younger generations shouldfavor equality more than older ones in societies that have experienced dramaticeconomic growth; and Islamic societies should be less supportive of gender equalitythan other societies.

Using the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human DevelopmentIndex, Inglehart and Norris categorize societies into three groups: Agrarian, In-dustrial, and Postindustrial. They classify states on the basis of the Freedom House’sGastil Index as Older Democracy, Newer Democracy, Semidemocracy, or Non-democratic. The analysis of values is based on the World Values Surveys, whichwere conducted in over seventy countries in waves from 1981 to 2001 and include(in the pooled data set) almost 250,000 respondents. Inglehart and Norris tapresponses to five key questions: whether men make better political leaders, whethermen have more right to jobs in times of scarcity, whether university educations aremore important for boys, whether having children is necessary for a women to befulfilled, and whether single women ought to have the right to have children.

Not surprisingly, Inglehart and Norris find that gender role attitudes, as meas-ured by this scale, vary according to levels of economic developmentFwith theScandinavian countries near the top and such countries as Nigeria and Bangladeshnear the bottom. Moreover, they demonstrate high correlations between the gen-der equality scale and a wide range of indicators of development, including suchgender-related indicators as the female school enrollment and the female literacyrate. They find relatively small sex differences on the scale, but strong cohort

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differences in the postindustrial societies, as predicted. Finally, they find the highestscores in the postindustrial societies, among women, among those under thirty,among those without children, and among those who adhere to postmaterialvalues.

The role of religion as a factor shaping attitudes toward gender role is discussedin chapter 3 in a comprehensive and illuminating way. Although Inglehart andNorris, in this chapter as in the book as a whole, have a relentlessly unilinear view ofthe world (in this case of an increasingly secularized world), they are also sensitiveto the existence of religious revivalism (for example, in Muslim countries) and tovariations in the ways religiosity affects attitudes intergenerationally and acrossagrarian, industrial, and postindustrial societies. They conclude that ‘‘the type ofreligion matters for beliefs about gender equality far more than the strength ofreligiosity’’ (pp. 67–68, emphasis in the original).

The second part of the book deals with several consequences of what Inglehartand Norris consider the ‘‘rising tide’’ of gender equality. First, they assess theemerging gender gap in public opinion and voting. The dependent variables hereare conventional left-right self-placement and intended vote, with parties classifiedalong the left-right spectrum using a scale developed by Inglehart and based onexpert rankings. Their explanatory models suggest that the modern gender gap(that is, the tendency for women to lean more to the left than men) is generatedmore by differences in the value orientation of the sexes (for example, attitudestoward postmaterialism, the role of government, and gender equality) than bydifferences in their social-structural positions. Moreover, the modern gender gap ismost prevalent among the younger generations.

A second possible consequence of the rise of gender equality is increased politicalactivism on the part of women. To test this hypothesis, Inglehart and Norris look atvoting and electoral activity, civic (organizational) activism, and protest activism.They find, consistent with other research (for example, Christy 1987; Burns,Schlozman, and Verba 2001), that a gender gap persistsFto the disadvantage ofwomenFeven in postindustrial societies. Finally, they examine the frequency withwhich women are found in positions of political leadership, again finding thatcultural factors (that is, the mass public’s position on the gender equality scale) has asignificant impact on the proportion of women in the national legislature. Thisresult remains significant even when controlling for such structural factors as thetype of electoral system and the number of political parties.

Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change will be interesting and useful forstudents of women and politics, political development and democratization, as wellas mass political opinion and behavior. The longitudinal analysis and the broadcomparisons among types of societies and nations (as well as among social groups)paint a fascinatingFalbeit very broad brushFpicture of attitudinal change andstability (what the authors define as ‘‘cultural change’’) regarding gender equality.

On the other hand, the broad-brush picture painted by Rising Tide: GenderEquality and Cultural Change leaves some key issues underdeveloped. For example,Inglehart and Norris claim explicitly that their analysis does not imply a deter-ministic outlook, and they do acknowledge the mixed results of modernization forwomen. Thus, the fall of Communism may have opened some new opportunitiesfor women, but it also reduced the number of women in elective office and with-drew parts of the social safety net. Similarly, industrialization may allow women tohave independent incomes, but it may also weaken the support networks providedby extended families. Unfortunately, Inglehart and Norris do not develop thispoint adequately, and their conclusions consistently point to an inexorably ‘‘risingtide.’’ Similarly, although Inglehart and Norris emphasize several times that thekind of attitudinal change on which they focus is necessary but not sufficient forgender equality, they also assert, early in the book, that they view ‘‘economic,political, and cultural changes’’ as ‘‘reciprocal’’ (p. 15). Yet, their causal argument

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clearly gives primacy to cultural factors, without much acknowledgment that, forexample, a strong women’s movement may hasten changes in public opinion (notto mention public policy). Thus, scholars who are interested in the historical andinstitutional factors that generate change will find a consideration of such things associal movements and political parties conspicuously absent. Despite these criti-cisms, however, Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change provides a coherent,carefully developed argument that will make important contributions to the liter-ature on gender and politics.

References

BURNS, NANCY, KAY LEHMAN SCHLOZMAN, AND SIDNEY VERBA. (2001) The Private Roots of Public Action:Gender, Equality, and Political Participation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CHRISTY, CAROL A. (1987) Sex Differences in Political Participation. New York: Praeger.

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