Using priming experiments to better understand gender attitudes
Photo: P. Mathur/Bioversity International.
Families feeling relatively poor increase their support for women in the workplace—but men still don’t want women to be making household decisions.
Sticky gender attitudes?
Researchers typically think of gender attitudes as challenging to move or shape. How individuals see women and their proper roles in society is viewed as sticky—something that might be changed through intensive programs and policy changes, but otherwise deeply entrenched since childhood. This has been a motivation for large investments to promote women’s economic and livelihood opportunities, and educational opportunities for girls. It has also motivated gender researchers to conduct intensive training programs to promote beliefs in gender equality; examples can be found in Burkina Faso (a family coaching program), Cote d’Ivoire (couples’ trainings), and Uganda (couples’ workshops on joint decision-making).
How economic conditions can influence gender attitudes
Our study, “Perceptions of Relative Deprivation and Women's Empowerment,” partly contrasts with this perception. It shows that some (but certainly not all) aspects of gender attitudes may be easy to alter. Specifically, they may change with the ubiquitous fluctuations of economic conditions confronted by the poor in low-income countries.
To explore how feeling economically left behind affects gender attitudes, we utilized a 2018 survey experiment we carried out with both female and male adults in approximately 1,000 households in Papua New Guinea. We employed an established survey treatment, called a priming experiment, to subtly alter respondents’ perception of their economic wellbeing relative to other households. Half of households were primed to feel that the income distribution was relatively wide, and that they were at the bottom of it; the other half were primed to feel that it was narrower, and that they were near the middle of it. We then asked individuals about their attitudes toward women’s involvement in decisions within their home as well as paid work and pursuit of educational opportunities outside of the home.
We find that some gender attitudes are sensitive to perceptions of relative poverty. Feelings that one’s household is relatively poor increase support for girls’ schooling and women’s paid employment among both men and women.