This study aims to examine the effect of gender-role attitude types on marriage perception. Prior discussions have pointed out deteriorating socioeconomic conditions and women’s opposition to gender inequality in the family as the main reasons behin...
This study aims to examine the effect of gender-role attitude types on marriage perception. Prior discussions have pointed out deteriorating socioeconomic conditions and women’s opposition to gender inequality in the family as the main reasons behind South Korean young adults’ growing negative perception of marriage. However, this negative perception of marriage is not necessarily invariable among different people. Thus this study raises and empirically validates the argument that perception of marriage depends on the type of gender-role attitude, and that the effect of gender-role attitude type again varies by gender.
Many earlier studies have maintained that the "traditional" gender-role norm based on gender division of labor is changing into an "equal" gender-role norm that supports the distribution of roles regardless of gender. They argue that, in cross-national comparison, perception of marriage varies with the degree of change in gender-role norm. In countries where "equal" gender-role norm is established, perception of marriage is generally positive, but in countries where "traditional" gender-role norm persists, it tends to be negative. However, the change in gender-role norm cannot be interpreted simply as evidence of progress from traditionalism to egalitarianism, since the meaning of egalitarianism is different by national context. This study analyzes how South Korea's two institutional contexts, the familial welfare system and the gender-segmented labor market, have constructed gender role norms. South Korean society encourage women to participate in wage labor, and still expect women to take full charge of care work in family.
This study also pays attention to the fact that an attitude divergent from the normative context has emerged among young adult groups in their twenties and thirties. Contrary to those in their forties or older, a considerable number of those in their twenties and thirties believe that women should enjoy equal rights in the workplace, and that women should not be the only ones who are in charge of care work in the family. Their attitudes differ from the institutional and normative contexts of gender-role division in the family, thus developing a negative perception of marriage. Even when the normative context that imposes double-role on women is accepted, the difficulty of performing the expected dual roles negatively affects marriage perception. The negative effect of gender role is more pronounced in women who have played a main role in the family.
The major findings from latent class analysis and binary logistic regression analysis using the data from Korea General Social Survey 2016 are as follows. First, considering gender-role attitude in both workplace and family, this study reveals that South Korea’s gender-role norm cannot be examined under the dichotomy of traditionalism and egalitarianism. Some refuse to conform to the gender role norm, and even the ones sticking to the norm face conflict between the double expectations on women to take full charge of family care and to participate in economic activities. Second, this study also figures out the mechanism of gender-role attitude affecting marriage perception. The result shows that the more women and men in their twenties and thirties believe in equal gender-role division, the more negative their perception of marriage becomes This finding reflects that, under the current institutional and normative contexts of South Korea, people expects a low possibility of being able to live according to their individual gender-role attitude after marriage.