Gender inequality, culture, and institutions

Abstract

We analyze the impact of culture and institutions on gender inequality attitudes in areas such as education, politics, and employment for women. Culture is represented by family ties and religiosity, constructed from the World Values Survey (WVS). Institutions are proxied by the stock of democracy, derived from Polity IV data. Our research shows conclusive statistical evidence suggesting that both family ties and religiosity have positive impacts on gender unequal attitudes. We find that religiosity has a greater impact than family ties in influencing gender unequal attitudes. Contrastingly, we observe that the longer a country has embraced democracy, the weaker its population’s gender unequal attitudes. The results remain valid even after conducting a battery of robustness checks where several controls were added. Our paper contributes to a better understanding of how culture, institutions, and gender inequality are related.