Goal & Concept
Goal
The goal of this exercise is to explore gender role attitudes in Japan and how they vary across different parts of the population. Crosstabulation will be used.
Concept
Gender role attitudes reflect social definitions of femininity and masculinity and define gender-appropriate behaviors based on culturally specific norms. Social scientists are interested in gender roles and gender role attitudes because they are often closely linked to gender stratification, or the unequal distribution of power and resources between men and women. Gender roles and their related attitudes vary significantly from society to society and can also vary over time. For example, in the U.S., expressions of gender role attitudes have become much more egalitarian over the last half century. This exercise will focus on Japanese gender role attitudes specifically in relation to work and the family.
Examples of possible research questions about gender role attitudes in Japan:
- Do men and women hold different attitudes about women's role in the family and the workplace?
- Do gender role attitudes vary by age?
- Do gender role attitudes vary by marital status?
- Are education and gender role attitudes related?
- How do gender role attitudes in Japan compare to those in the U.S.?
- Have gender role attitudes changed over time?
Dataset
Data for this exercise come from the 2005 Japanese General Social Survey (JGSS). The JGSS was funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and collected by the Osaka University of Commerce Institute of Regional Studies. Its main purpose is to obtain political, sociological, and economic information from individuals in Japanese households.
The survey used here is part of a series -- the first study in the series was conducted in 2000 and data collection has taken place every year or two since. The JGSS collects data using face-to-face and self-administered questionnaires and contains measures of employment, attitudes about the family and relationships, health status, quality of life, household and parental characteristics, and demographic characteristics.
The JGSS sample is designed to represent individuals ages 20-89 living in Japan with the right to vote. The surveys were conducted in Japanese, but the data files and codebooks are produced both in Japanese and English.
This exercise will use the following variables:
- Gender (SEXA)
- Age (AGEB)
- Connection of women's happiness and marriage (Q4WNMGA)
- View on wife working (Q4WWJBIA)
- View of gender roles (Q4WWHHX)
- Effect on children of mother's work (Q4JBMMCC)
Application
In this application, we will explore the relationship between gender role attitudes and various demographic characteristics using crosstabulation.
Gender Role Attitudes by Gender
First consider individuals' views on whether married women should work. The variable Q4WWJBIA contains responses to the question, "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? If a husband has sufficient income, it is better for his wife not to have a job." We recoded Q4WWJBIA into two categories representing general agreement or disagreement and dropped the respondents who did not answer. Looking at this new variable, WIFEWORK, what do you notice about people's responses?
A crosstabulation allows us to examine the relationship between WIFEWORK and gender, which is measured by the variable SEXA. Do men and women hold the same attitudes about whether married women should work? What makes you answer the way you did?
Next, look at the variable WOMANHAPPY, which contains answers to the question, "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Without a doubt, a woman's happiness lies in a marriage." Answers to this question are coded 1 for "agree" and 2 for "disagree." (We recoded Q4WNMGA as above.)
Now look at the crosstab of WOMANHAPPY with SEXA. Are men and women equally likely to agree that women's happiness is based in marriage?
Finally, consider the relationship between gender and whether individuals believe that young children suffer if their mothers work outside the home. Again use a crosstab, this time with MOMWORK (recoded from Q4JBMMCC as above) and SEXA. Do men and women have different attitudes toward mothers' work outside the home? Look in particular at the bar chart. What does it show?
Gender Role Attitudes by Age
Next we'll examine the relationship between gender role attitudes and age. We recoded the age variable, AGEB into three categories: 20-40, 41-64, and 65 and older. We called the new variable AGEGROUP. ROLES is a recode of Q4WWHHX, which asks respondents to agree or disagree with the statement, "A husband's job is to earn money; a wife's job is to look after the home and family." Look at a crosstabulation of AGEGROUP and ROLES. Does there appear to be a relationship between age and attitudes about gender roles? What percent of those under age 40 agreed with the statement? What about among those over 65?
Finally, run crosstabs of the other gender role attitudes with age (WIFEWORK, MOMWORK, and WOMANHAPPY). Is the pattern similar for these measures of gender role attitudes? How do the age groups differ in their attitudes toward wives working? Does the same pattern hold for attitudes toward mothers working? Do the age groups hold different attitudes about marriage as a source of happiness for women? Which question shows the most variability among the age groups?
Interpretation & Summary
Think about your answers to the application questions before you click through to the interpretation guide for help in answering them.
Gender Role Attitudes by Gender
Looking at the full sample (frequency table and chart for Wifework), what can you say about people's attitudes about whether women should work?
Do men and women hold the same attitudes about whether married women should work?
Are men and women equally likely to agree that women's happiness is based in marriage?
Do men and women have different attitudes toward mothers' work outside the home? What does the bar chart show?
Gender Role Attitudes by Age
Does there appear to be a relationship between age and attitudes about gender roles? What percent of those under age 40 agreed with the statement that men should earn money and women should take care of the home/family?
How do the age groups differ in their attitudes toward wives working?
Does the same pattern hold for attitudes toward mothers working?
Do the age groups hold different attitudes about marriage as a source of happiness for women?
Which question shows the most variability among the age groups?
Interpretation
Things to think about in interpreting the results:
It is important to look at the amount of missing data in each relationship and think about the ways in which that might affect the generalizability of the results - some crosstabulation tables have relatively little missing data, others have a great deal because the questions were only asked of people with particular characteristics. In general, results from this dataset should be fairly representative of the general Japanese population because it is a national probability sample and because we used weights in the analyses.
Reading the results: the numbers in each cell of the crosstabulation tables show the percent of the people who fall into the overlapping categories, followed by the actual number of people that represents in this sample. This dataset is very large, so the actual number is often in the millions. The coloring in the tables demonstrates how the observed numbers in each cell compares to the expected number if there were no association between the two variables. The accompanying bar charts display the patterns visually as well.
The use of column percentages, as shown in these tables, allows for the comparison of answers to the "outcome" of interest across values of the grouping variable. For example, only 35.7% of those ages 20-40 agreed that husbands should earn the money while wives care for the home, compared to 75.9% of those ages 65 and older. Conversely, those in the younger age group were much more likely to disagree with that same statement than those in the oldest age group.
The analyses show the following:
Men were slightly more likely than women to agree that if the husband earns enough income, it is better for the wife not to work. 52.4% of men agreed with this statement, compared to 47.4% of women. More women than men agree that a woman's happiness is tied to her marriage. 56.9% of women agreed with this statement, compared with 50.2% of men. There is only a slight difference in men's and women's agreement that children suffer when their mothers work outside the home. Slightly more than half of both men and women agreed with this statement, with 54.4% of men and 51.5% of women in agreement.
A much higher proportion of people in the oldest age group agreed that men should earn the money and women should care for the home than in either of the younger groups. 75.9% of the oldest respondents held this belief, compared with only 35.7% of the youngest age group, and 45% of the middle group. This pattern of much higher agreement among the oldest age groups is repeated in each measure of gender role attitudes.
The measure that showed the most variability, however, was the question about women's happiness in marriage -- under 40% (38.8%) of those aged 20-40 felt that women's happiness was based in marriage while the percent was more than double (81%) among those aged 65 and older. It seems like attitudes about family may change more quickly than those about work.
Summary
The goal of this exercise was to examine gender role attitudes in Japan and demonstrate how they may vary by gender and age. Taken together, the results show that men and women hold some different attitudes toward gender roles, though the differences are generally quite small. On the other hand, gender role attitudes vary greatly by age, with the oldest age group much more likely to hold attitudes that favor men in the workforce and women in the home.
Bibliography
The references presented here represent resources that might be useful to instructors and students wishing to further explore this topic. All were chosen because they relate to the topic of study, whether or not they use the specific dataset that was used in this exercise. Some relate directly to the concepts as defined by the exercise, others explore the topic more broadly either conceptually or empirically. Most can be found in the ICPSR bibliography, though some outside sources were added if they were particularly relevant.
Blee, Kathleen M.; Tickayer, Ann R., "Racial differences in men's attitudes about women's gender roles." Journal of Marriage and the Family. Feb 1995, 57, (1), 21 - 30.
Braun, Michael; Alwin, Duane F.; Scott, Jacqueline, "Generational Change in Gender Roles: Western Industrialized and Former Socialist Countries Compared." International Sociological Association, 1998.
Broman, Clifford L., "Gender, Work-Family Roles, and Psychological Well-being of Blacks." Journal of Marriage and the Family. May 1991, 53, (2), 509 - 520.
Burkhauser, Richard V.; Duncan, Greg J., "Economic Risks of Gender Roles: Income Loss and Life Events Over the Life Course." Social Science Quarterly. Mar 1989, 70, (1), 3 - 23.
Goldscheider, Frances K.; Goldscheider, Calvin, "Gender roles, marriage, and residential independence." Sociological Forum. Dec 1992, 7, (4), 679 - 696.
Knudsen, Knud; Waerness, Kari, "Reactions to global processes of change: Attitudes toward gender roles and marriage in modern nations." Comparative Social Research. 1999, 18, 161 - 195.
Krauss, Wilma Rule, "Political implications of gender roles: A review of the literature." American Political Science Review. Dec 1974, 68, (4), 1706 - 1723.
Lye, Diane N.; Biblarz, Timothy J., "The Effects of Attitudes Toward Family Life and Gender Roles on Marital Satisfaction." Journal of Family Issues. Jun 1993, 14, (2), 157 - 188.
Milkie, Melissa A.; Peltola, Pia, "Playing all the roles: Gender and the work-family balancing act." Journal of Marriage and the Family. May 1999, 61, (2), 476 - 490.
Raymo, James M.; Liang, Jersey; Sugisawa, Hidehiro; Kobayashi, Erika; Sugihara, Yoko, "Work at older ages in Japan: Variation by gender and employment status." Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences. May 2004, 59B, (3), S154 - S163.
Sackmann, Rosemarie, "European gender roles: Public discourses and regional practices." Innovation. Jun 1998, 11, (2), 167 - 190.
Taylor, Robert Joseph; Keith, Verna M.; Tucker, M. Belinda, "Gender, marital, familial, and friendship roles." In Jackson, James Sidney, Aging in Black America. 49 - 68, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,1993.