Navigating between two cultures: Immigrants' gender attitudes toward working women

Léa Pessin; Bruno Arpino

doi:10.4054/DemRes.2018.38.35

Volume 38 - Article 35 | Pages 967–1016

Navigating between two cultures: Immigrants' gender attitudes toward working women

By Léa Pessin, Bruno Arpino

Date received:

15 May 2017

Date published:

15 Mar 2018

Word count:

9075

Keywords:

cross-classified model, European Social Survey, European Values Study, female labor force participation, gender attitudes, gender roles, immigration, World Values Survey

DOI:

10.4054/DemRes.2018.38.35

Replicable Material:

demographic-research.38-35 (zip file, 129 MB)
readme.38-35 (text file, 500 Byte)

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Abstract

Background: Gender attitudes toward women’s employment are of particular importance because they positively inﬂuence gender-equal outcomes in the labor market. Our understanding of the mechanisms that promote egalitarian gender attitudes among immigrants, however, remains limited.

Objective: By studying ﬁrst- and second-generation immigrants from multiple origins and living in different countries, this article seeks to explain under what conditions the prevalent cultural attitudes toward gender roles at the origin and destination inﬂuence immigrants’ gender attitudes. We address three main research questions. First, does the country-of-origin gender ideology inﬂuence immigrants’ views toward working women? Second, does the country-of-destination gender ideology inﬂuence immigrants’ views toward working women? And third, are these relationships moderated by (1) the immigrant generation; (2) the age at arrival in the country of destination; (3) the length of residence at the destination?

Methods: Using data from the European Social Survey, we model immigrants’ gender attitudes toward working women by using linear cross-classiﬁed models to account for clustering into the country of origin and destination.

Results: The results highlight the importance of the context of early socialization in shaping immigrants’ gender attitudes. First-generation immigrants, and more speciﬁcally adult migrants, hold gender attitudes that reﬂect more strongly the country of origin’s gender culture. In contrast, the positive association between gender ideology at destination and immigrants’ gender attitudes is stronger among second-generation immigrants and child migrants.

Contribution: We add to the literature on gender ideology formation by analyzing the inﬂuence of gender ideology at the origin and destination levels on the gender attitudes of immigrants from 96 countries of origin and residing across 32 countries of destination.