Virtues or Talent among Brotherless Daughters: A Study of How Patriarchal Gender Ideals Affect Gender Role Attitudes among Women from the One-Child Generation in China

Abstract

Are women from the one-child generation in China gender egalitarians? Despite extensive studies on gender role attitudes from structural and cultural perspectives, limited research has explored the significance of gender role attitudes in Global South contexts, like China, which have unique demographic and cultural characteristics. This study focuses on the talent-and-virtue gender ideal – a classic set of patriarchal gender norms in which men are judged by their talent but women by virtues. Using 82 individual interviews with siblingless women, this study argues that women’s accumulation of socio-economic, geographical and financial (dis)advantages through the life course, particularly in relation to their husbands, drives their divergent gender role attitudes. Findings reveal the limitations of structural and cultural perspectives in explaining divergence and conversions of gender attitudes. A life-course accumulation and relational positionality lens offers an opportunity for scholars to assess the complexity of gender attitudes in Global South contexts and to analyse persistent gender inequalities in patriarchal cultures.