Gender Attitudes Within and Between European Countries: Regional Variations Matter

Abstract

The current paper reports systematic variations of people’s attitudes toward gender and gendered roles between countries and regions in Europe, making regional and national comparisons simultaneously visible on the same scale over time. We operationalized the concept of “gender attitudes” by using a fresh combination of items among those administered by the European Values Survey (in 2008 and in 2017) whose sampling strategy is statistically representative at both national and regional level. Then, we validated our proposed measure by using the Rasch model to test its measurement invariance across European countries and regions, and over time. We included regions under the hypothesis that the variability of gender attitudes is primarily attributable to the local sociocultural milieu people live in, and thus that the variability within a country (e.g., at regional level) can be even larger than that between countries, as confirmed by a multilevel analysis. Results confirmed our hypothesis that sub-national variability can be larger than that between countries and suggested that the regional-national issue may be relevant more widely (e.g., for America, South Asia, Australasia) than the European “case” reported here. Therefore, policies promoting equity should account for regional variability to design appropriate interventions. The measure we validated at both national and regional level is ready to be used in further/other research in Social Sciences.