Revisiting gender and the state

Gender and the state are integrally bound, and the dynamic interplay between the two has long been studied in various disciplines including gender and cultural studies, feminist studies and political studies. Feminist approaches — such as radical, liberal, socialist, post-structural and Nordic feminisms — have offered a strong strand among such disciplines, all of which confirm the significance of China’s state impact on gender. To be specific, liberal feminists view the state as reflecting the interest groups that control its institutions, which are dominated by men and adopt male-preferred policies (e.g., Enloe, [1990] 2014). Whereas liberal feminists regard the state in terms of its political functions, radical feminists extend their interest to the broader structures of the state and society by showing the practices’ patriarchal nature operating within broader decision-making processes (Mackinnon, 1989). By distinction, socialist feminists pursue a particular focus on class oppression, and understand the state as a dual system of capitalist and patriarchal oppression (Eisenstein, 1979). While all of these approaches tend to generalize the state as a unitive notion, post-structural feminists and Nordic feminists highlight the differences between states, and call for ways of thinking about the state that move beyond the narrow understanding of a monolithic entity (Kantola, 2006). For post-structural feminists, the state is a distinguished set of institutions, agencies and discourses, which is not inherently patriarchal but is culturally constructed as such through the political process (Connell, 1987). Hernes (1987), as a key scholar among Nordic feminists, deemed Nordic states as being potentially women-friendly societies where state policies support women’s political and social empowerment.

The state apparatus is often seen to be a leading force in shaping the gender relations that affect social change. Connell (1990, pp. 519–32) summarized six perspectives through which to see the dynamic interplay between the state and gender issues: (1) the state operates within gender relations as the central institutionalization of gendered power; (2) the state is a gendered institution marked by its internal gender regime; (3) the state has the capacity to regulate gender relations; (4) state activity helps to form the social categories that define gender relations; (5) the state is a major stakeholder in gender politics; (6) as a gendered institution, the state is liable to transformation and crisis. Further, Young (2002) proposed that gender works along three irreducible axes: the sexual division of labor (or the allocation of productive and reproductive activities by sex), normative heterosexuality, and hierarchies of power. Hence, it can be seen that gender relations in a society are predominantly driven by hierarchal power, with the state playing a primary role. We consider the same to be true of the gender discourse in China.

Gender discourse in china

Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism are regarded as the three major influencers on traditional Chinese gender discourse, with Confucianism being the most dominant. For more than two thousand years, as the state ideology in China, Confucianism maintained the features of heterosexual hegemony, male dominance and female subordination. Although banished in 1949 with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC hereafter), and remaining in theoretical exile for the 30 years that Marxism was the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP hereafter) guiding ideological principle, the canonization of Confucianism returned in the reform era, gaining prominence once again in the 1990s. In Confucian discourse, gender division can be understood through the nei-wai framework, which is founded on assigning men to the realm of wai (the public sphere, where extra-familial relations and personal accomplishment mainly take place) and women to the realm of nei (the domestic sphere, which primarily refers to concealment, familial and kinship relations, and practical household management) (Rosenlee, 2006). This framework is quite similar to the Western feminist perspectives that also emphasize the division of private and public spheres that stem from the early industrialization context.

In the new millennium, instead of being abandoned as an obsolete theory, Confucianism has been continuously upheld by the government as an essential component of Chinese culture, with PRC authorities attempting to reclaim control over the use of Confucius and Confucianism as national icons (Chua, 2001). The PRC has utilized some particularly favorable aspects of Confucianism, such as respect for authorities, devotion to the state, social harmony, obedience to superiors, and protection of the family to regulate the people and stabilize society (Chen, 2011; Song, 2003). In this way, women’s domestic roles have been advocated under the umbrella of marriage by connecting the CCP’s political purpose with re-engaging Confucian values. This has been viewed as a necessary measure for preserving social stability and Ji et al. (2017, 768) have called this phenomenon ‘socialism-and Confucian-patriarchy hybrid gender (in)equality’.

Based on this consistent gender inequality, along with changing gender ideologies in China, Ji et al. (2017) have framed the two-sphere division in mainland China in light of Song’s (2011, 2012) model of ‘private embedded[ness] in the public sphere’ and Zuo and Jiang (2009) model of ‘construction of family and state’ (cited in Ji et al., 2017, 766-7). In doing so, they argue that the apparent gender equality of the socialist era was enforced by the state and then further justified by changing gender ideologies. Being context-specific, while the pathways toward two-sphere division rely on a society’s specific historical situations and institutional configurations, the Chinese state’s path has been facilitated primarily by the withdrawal of social services and a decided muting of its egalitarian gender ideology.

While studies by Ji et al. (2017) and Song (2011, 2012), as well as Zuo and Jiang (2009) models, have theorized China’s gender-state dynamics from top-down perspectives, the current study engages in the discussion from a bottom-up vantage point. As Mamonova (2019) contends, propagandistic messages without a pre-existing social base tend to be ineffective and are ultimately rejected. From this perspective, we believe that gender inequality in contemporary China is not only driven by top-down state regulation, but also necessarily coexists with public opinions toward gender role attitudes. It attempts to develop a comprehensive and operational scale through which to evaluate gender role attitudes among China’s young people (age group 18–35), as well as investigate the psycho-political antecedents of such attitudes. This study focuses on China’s youth for two reasons. On the one hand, young people are at a stage in life where they are actively forming their beliefs, attitudes, and values. Investigating gender role attitudes during this formative period allows us to understand how Chinese societal norms and expectations influence the development of these attitudes. On the other hand, young people are often at the forefront of social and cultural change, and may challenge traditional gender norms and contribute to the evolution of more inclusive and equitable attitudes. Given the long-term education of China’s youth is emphasized by a top-down, traditionalist approach, studying their attitudes toward gender roles can offer insights into the extent to which compliance or resistance to gender role attitudes may relate to their perception of the Chinese state.

Literature review

The gender–state interplay in China has long been debated in the literature. Studies have predominantly approached the matter from a top-down perspective, exploring ways in which the Chinese government has constructed the gender inequality discourse, and how gender relations have been shaped by gender-related policies and state-promoted norms such as birth planning policies (e.g., Wong, 1997) and the resurgence of Confucianism (e.g., Ji et al., 2017). Top-down studies typically argue that state policies, such as birth planning, have played a key role in shaping China’s gender inequality. Studies from the bottom-up perspective, by contrast, remain limited. A few scholars have paid attention to regional comparisons among gender role attitudes in the Chinese context. For instance, comparative research on Taiwan and mainland China suggests that the latter region shows a higher tendency to support women working for pay and is less inclined to relegate women solely to domestic roles, in comparison to the Taiwanese respondents. On the other hand, Taiwanese individuals are more likely than their Chinese counterparts to approve of women working both outside the home and choosing to stay at home (Yang, 2016).

Besides regional comparisons, women and youth have long been the study foci of gender role attitudes in China. Women-centered studies are predominantly conducted from the perspectives of women’s education, marital status and motherhood roles. Shu (2004) suggested that individuals with higher levels of education tend to endorse more egalitarian gender attitudes, and this influence is particularly pronounced for women, indicating a significant empowerment effect for them. According to Zhang (2015), marital happiness showed a negative correlation between wives’ relative incomes to that of their husbands and a positive correlation with traditional breadwinner role attitudes. Zhang et al. (2007) also indicated the connections between mothers’ attitudes toward gender and educational aspirations by arguing that mothers who adhere to traditional gender values tend to exhibit more pronounced gender bias in their aspirations for their daughters. By contrast, mothers with sons are more responsive to their children’s school engagement when forming educational aspirations compared to mothers with daughters.

More importantly, young people have long been a focus group for scholars to engage with the socio-psychological effects of gender role attitudes. For instance, Gui (2019) investigated the correlation between gender role attitudes and psychological well-being among undergraduates living in either rural or urban areas. The study revealed that female students exhibited more gender egalitarian attitudes than their male counterparts, highlighting a rural–urban disparity. In another study, Koo et al. (2020) delved into the gender ideologies of youth in post-socialist China, identifying three distinct gender ideology profiles: egalitarian, essentialist, and neutral groups. The research showcased a co-existence of continuing egalitarian attitudes in families and a surge of essentialist attitudes in employment in China. These findings underscore the complexity of evolving gender role attitudes in different societal domains.

These works collectively demonstrate that youth are not merely a convenient sample for research, but a dynamic group influenced by various demographic factors. They actively participate in gender-related social activities, providing valuable insights into the changing landscape of gender role attitudes for future research.

The authors find three interrelated gaps in the current literature. The first involves extending the investigations of China’s gender issues beyond the top-down perspective. The majority of research on the relationship between China’s gender inequality and state intervention focuses on policies and strategies adopted by the government, as well as their ideological functions. Much less attention has been paid to the bottom-up perspective on China’s gender-related issues. The authors believe that research on public opinion, and of young people in particular, toward China’s gender–state interplay contributes to sketching out a comprehensive understanding of the current gender norms in China, which can provide insights into the feasibility, durability and social impact of gender-related policies.

Second, extant studies on Chinese gender attitudes from the bottom-up approach, which usually adopt a survey method, tend to be apolitical and look at youth mentation from cultural and demographic perspectives. Such studies, be they sociological or psychological, rarely incorporate individuals’ political ideations into their research design or measurements. Since, in the Chinese context, the state has created gender policies and significantly shaped gender ideologies, the gender–state dynamic should also be considered from the bottom-up — we want to know the nature of the political and psychological forces that shape gender role attitudes in China.

Third, as the majority of research on China’s gender attitudes relies on measurements provided by the World Value Survey (WVS), or the European Value Survey (EVS, full details can be found here: http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/), an important dimension of Chinese people’s gender ideology — individual viewpoints regarding marriage and fertility — is usually omitted. Due to the heavy influence of traditional Confucian thought on young people’s education and gender values, marriage has been regarded as a significant and legitimate form of social recognition through which to define a person in Chinese society. Therefore, a more comprehensive measurement scale that incorporates the nuances of Chinese gender values is still absent.

The current study, therefore, aims to fill these gaps by building up a more comprehensive and operational measurement scale to better delineate various indicators of young Chinese people’s gender role attitudes. Then, it also investigates the psycho-political antecedents of youth’s gender role attitudes, specifically focusing on three aspects: system justification theory, national identification, and life satisfaction.

The psycho-political antecedents of gender role attitudes among china’s youth

System justification

According to system justification theory (SJT), system-justifying beliefs serve a psychologically palliative function that can fulfil individuals’ underlying needs through the justification and defence of the current system, even when that system is unfavorable to them or others (Jost and Banaji, 1994; Jost et al., 2004). From this perspective, activities that resist or counter the status quo can motivate system-justifying individuals to justify their view of the current system as legitimate and desirable (Jost and Banaji, 1994; Jost et al., 2004). System justification beliefs have been viewed as a significant psycho-political driving force in influencing individuals’ gender role attitudes. For instance, Yeung et al. (2014) sought to identify the role of system justification in Western rejections of feminism, concluding that anti-feminist backlash can be motivated by system justification.

As discussed in the last section, the public and private realms in China have long been intertwined, with the resurgence of Confucianism in post-socialist China reinforcing patriarchal dominance and encouraging women’s retreat from the public realm back to that of the family. Based on the state’s long-lasting intervention with gender relations, we presume that people who favor the socio-political system might have higher levels of acceptance toward the current situation of gender inequality and be more likely to advocate traditional Confucian values. Hence, we are interested in examining the correlation between young people’s gender role attitudes and their system justification beliefs from a bottom-up approach.

Question 1: Are gender role attitudes among China’s youth influenced by system justification beliefs?

National identification

Studies have shown gender norms and identities that are negotiated with national identification in cultures such as the United States (Rice, 2018), Northern Europe (Tienari et al., 2005), Germany (Himmel and Baptista, 2016), Ireland (MacPherson, 2012), Australia (Wickes et al., 2006), the Muslim world (Moghadam, 1994) and Africa (Smith, 2013). Yet, none have tested the correlation between gender role attitudes and national identification. As Confucianism has long been upheld as the cultural pride of Chinese civilization, we postulate that those who value their Chinese national identity more might be less resistant to the CCP’s Confucian cultivation and more likely to accept traditional gender values, thereby showing more tolerant attitudes toward the current situation of gender inequality in contemporary China.

Particularly for young people, China Daily reported a survey in 2018 showing that Chinese youth possess an extremely high degree of national identity (China Daily, 2018). Further, Dai and Chu (2019) showed that the strength of national identification and intergroup attitudes of Chinese youth is predominantly affected by Confucian ethics, media influence, and historical complexities. Based on such foregoing ideas, we would like to examine whether Chinese young people’s gender role attitudes are correlated with their national identification.

Question 2: Are gender role attitudes among China’s youth influenced by the extent to which they value Chinese national identity?

Life satisfaction

Studies have shown gender role attitudes to be related to psychological well-being, with life satisfaction being one of the most frequently researched aspects. Specifically, gender role satisfaction has been proven to positively correlate with life satisfaction in Iran and Norway (Soltanpanah et al., 2018), and in Turkey (Çetinkaya and Gençdoğan, 2014). While the relationship between traditional gender role attitudes and satisfaction with those roles is affected by culture, greater gender role satisfaction is not always predicted by more egalitarian gender values (Burns and Homel, 1986). Indeed, some studies have found that women’s life satisfaction might be negatively correlated with their egalitarian attitudes — women who work longer than their husbands have a significantly lower degree of life satisfaction (Lepinteur et al., 2016). Also notable, while women’s employment status has a positive impact on their life and work satisfaction, their marriage and family life are shown to suffer from it (Park, 1991). Gui (2019) claims that in the Chinese context, women having traditional gender role attitudes tend to possess worse subjective health and lower life satisfaction. These results are consistent with the research findings from studies conducted in the UK (Sweeting et al., 2014) and the Netherlands (van de Vijver, 2007). Thus, inspired by the idea that China’s youth might be more gender egalitarian, and that people with more gender egalitarian attitudes do not always have a higher level of life satisfaction, we are interested in studying how young people’s life satisfaction in China correlates with their gender role attitudes.

Question 3: Are gender role attitudes among China’s youth influenced by the level of life satisfaction?

Methods

Participants and design

This study has two aims: to develop a comprehensive, operational scale to capture and measure gender role attitudes among China’s youth, and to investigate some psycho-political antecedents and motives for their attitudes on gender issues. To achieve these aims, we conducted an online survey of young Chinese respondents and analyzed the data through exploratory factor analysis and correlative and regression models.

A total of 1200 participants were initially recruited from online access panels, with a quota procedure of age, gender and educational levels being applied. After eliminating ineligible participants, duplicates, and anyone who took <180 sFootnote 1 to complete the survey, 932 participants were retained. Then, as this paper focuses on the youth’s gender attitudes, we further eliminated participants aged over 35 yearsFootnote 2. Finally, 885 participants were retained. All respondents were Chinese citizens. Recruitment of participants and the collection of data were conducted through the crowdsourcing platform Wenjuanxing during October and November 2019. Wenjuanxing is widely acknowledged as a professional online survey tool in China, frequently employed for China-related social studies. To ensure the integrity of our data, we engaged Wenjuanxing’s paid sample service, which boasts a registered membership exceeding 2.6 million users. Wenjuanxing offers a pragmatic solution that fuses online surveys with local Web 2.0 services. The questionnaires hosted on Wenjuanxing could be directly distributed via WeChat, accompanied by virtual cash incentives enclosed as red packets. This innovative approach has proven highly effective in motivating respondents to complete online surveys. Compensation for our participants amounted to 6 Chinese RMB (refer to Table 1 for demographic information below).

Table 1 Demographic information (N = 885).
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Wenjuanxing emerged as an optimal choice for this online survey due to several factors: (1) the availability of a free version; (2) the capability to distribute virtual cash incentives via WeChat — a versatile and immensely popular instant messaging application in China; and (3) the extensive prevalence of smartphones and online applications throughout the country. It is important to acknowledge, however, that despite its practical utility, Wenjuanxing does not provide a random sample of the Chinese population. Consequently, the results derived from this sample should be interpreted with this limitation in mind.

Variables and measurement

Gender egalitarianism

The term ‘gender role attitudes’ refers to the views held by individuals regarding the roles men and women should play in society. The term is mostly used with respect to the distinction between paid and unpaid work, as van der Horst (2014) illustrated. When individuals agree that a traditional division of labor between men and women – with men in the role of breadwinner and women in the role of homemaker – is advisable, they are considered to have traditional gender role attitudes. When they do not agree with such a division of labor, and instead want a more equal division of labor, they are considered to have egalitarian or modern gender role attitudes. ‘Gender egalitarianism’ is “the degree to which a collective minimizes gender inequality” (House et al., 2004, 30) for the present study concerns the extent to which the participants hold gender role attitudes toward gender equality in the Chinese context.

The measures of gender role attitudes included in many representative international and national omnibus surveys have been being developed since the 1970s, with most focusing on the traditional roles of men and women. Quantitative studies examining the change in gender role attitudes since the end of the 1970s have shown that traditional gender role attitudes have declined, and that egalitarian attitudes have increased (e.g., Cotter et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2007). Although gender role attitudes vary between different groups in a society, people who are well-educated, less religious, unmarried, and post-materialist are found to be more egalitarian (Inglehart and Norris, 2003). Also, shifts toward industrial and postindustrial society have been shown to lead to more egalitarian values (Walter, 2018).

Most studies evaluating gender role attitudes rely on the measures provided in surveys, with the EVS being the most frequently used. For instance, data from the EVS has been adopted to study age and sex differences in gender role attitudes in Luxembourg (Valentova, 2013), women’s roles in the public sphere in Italy (Lomazzi, 2017a), and gender role attitudes toward female employment, fertility and religiosity across diversified countries (Arpino et al., 2015; Guetto et al., 2015). In measuring attitudes toward gender roles, the EVS is considered a trustworthy cross-national survey program used prolifically to investigate European values in an increasing number of countries (Lomazzi, 2017b).

This study adopts the indicators developed by Shorrocks (2018) based on the EVS to measure gender role attitudes among China’s youth: the male priority indicator a typical question is ‘Men have more right to a job than women’; the child suffering indicator (a typical question is ‘A preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works’); the home and children indicator (a typical question is ‘A job is alright, but what most women really want is a home and children’); and the housewife indicator (a typical question is ‘Being a housewife is just as fulfilling as working for pay’).

It is demonstrated that the home and children indicator and the housewife indicator focus on some similar and essentialist beliefs about women’s preferences toward the trade-off between employment and family life, which are sometimes referred to as ‘gender ideology’ (e.g., Braun et al., 1994). Therefore, this study combines the above two indicators with one gender ideology indicator.

Considering that marriage and fertility have long been an important concern in Chinese attitudes toward gender issues, the authors then added a new indicator — marriage and fertility. In the traditional Chinese context, men are allocated the public sphere and women the private, with women serving limited functional roles — daughter, wife, and mother — which are regarded as subservient to and perpetuating the patrilineal line. In this circumstance, unless being attached to a male leader (a husband, a father or a son) or situated in a familial structure, the female personhood is barely realized. The distinction between men and women in the Chinese social system is bespoken by the disparity between the public and private realms (Rosenlee, 2006). In this discourse, with the privileged man regarded as the sole bearer of the patrilineage, it is rare for a woman who is able to be endowed with a permanent social place of her own to achieve this without getting married. Thus, marriage becomes a woman’s only legitimate social recognition. However, men do not confront this situation, which is to say that a definitive marker of womanhood is marriage (Rosenlee, 2006). Thus, with the revitalization of Confucianism in contemporary China, marriage and fertility are still considered predominantly in terms of gender issues.

The newly added marriage and fertility indicator consists of three questions to measure Chinese attitudes and stances toward marriage and fertility. Typical items include: ‘A female is a failure if she is over 27 years old but does not have a husband or boyfriend’. Participants indicated their degree of agreement or disagreement with each item on a 7-point scale.

It is necessary to note that in Shorrocks (2018) and some other research, the distinctive indicators of gender role attitudes are shown to be weakly related to each other, and are often used separately (e.g., Crompton and Harris, 1997). However, this study empirically tests through exploratory factor analysis whether or not the abovementioned four indicators could be treated as a holistic index in the Chinese context.

System justifying beliefs

In measuring general system-justifying attitudes, the study used a brief version of Kay and Jost’s (2003, 282) system justification scale (SJS): ‘In general, I find society to be fair’; ‘In general, China’s political system operates as it should’; ‘China is one of the best countries in the world to live in’; ‘Most policies in China serve the greater good’; ‘Everyone has a fair shot at wealth and happiness’; and ‘The Chinese society is set up so that people usually get what they deserve’. Conventionally, when justifying the legitimacy of a given system, a crucial notion is the ‘fairness’ of the given system. However, the Chinese context also emphasizes the ‘efficiency’ of the system — namely, its capacity to develop the nation and improve individuals’ lives. As such, the author has included two additional items to gauge the general system-justifying beliefs of the Chinese people: ‘Compared with other nations, China’s polity has a distinctive advantage in developing the country and implementing policies’; and ‘The Chinese people’s dramatically rising living standard should be mainly attributed to the Communist Party of China and the government’. Participants indicated their degree of agreement or disagreement with each item on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Higher scores indicate greater general system-justifying attitudes (M = 4.75, SD = 1.04, Cronbach’s α = 0.89).

National identification, satisfaction with life, and demographics

When measuring national identification and satisfaction with life, this study used adapted versions of the National Identification Scale (Huddy and Khatib, 2007), and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985), respectively. Typical items include ‘Being Chinese is very important to me’ (national identification, M = 5.63, SD = 1.17, Cronbach’s α = 0.84) and ‘In most ways, my life is close to my ideal’ (satisfaction with life, M = 3.92, SD = 1.23, Cronbach’s α = 0.84). The answers ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Higher scores indicate greater identification with China and higher satisfaction with life. Full items are shown in the online supplementary data. In addition, participants also provided their demographic details, consisting of sex, age, and highest educational qualifications.

Results

To investigate whether the four indicators of gender role attitudes (male priority, child suffering, gender ideology, and marriage and fertility) could reflect a common factor, which is a holistic index in the Chinese context, this study first computed an exploratory factor analysis to examine the factor structure. The number of factors to be extracted was determined by factor eigenvalues above 1.0. The size of the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy, KMO = 0.81, and Bartlett’s test of sphericity, (6) = 1817.31, p < 0.001, indicated that the items had an adequate common variance for exploratory factor analysis. A principal components analysis was conducted on four indicators of the scale: male priority, child suffering, gender ideology, and marriage and fertility. The scores of the four indicators were calculated as the mean of the items of each concept. The results of the exploratory factor analysis indicated the existence of one factor with >1.0 and a corresponding value of 4.47. As reported in Table 2, factor loadings indicated that all four indicators loaded onto the dominant factor, which explained 72.30% of the variance. Based on these results and the criteria indicated above, the unidimensional factor structure was preferred. An overall score of belief in gender role attitudes was, therefore, calculated as the mean of the four indicators’ scores. Cronbach’s for this overall factor was very good (0.87).

Table 2 Concepts and factor loadings of the novel measure of gender egalitarianism.
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The results of exploratory factor analysis illustrate that the four indicators of gender role attitudes are strongly related to each other, and thus reflect a common factor. While in most Western contexts, ‘male priority’, ‘child suffering’ and ‘gender ideology’ seem to reflect some conceptually distinct indicators that can be only weakly related to each other, and thus are often treated separately (e.g., Crompton and Harris, 1997; Shorrocks, 2018), our study demonstrates that for the contemporary Chinese generation, these three indicators are strongly connected, along with our identified indicator of ‘marriage and fertility’. The four indicators jointly reflect and configure the Chinese people’s perceptions, ideological stances, and beliefs regarding gender issues.

To examine the associations between gender role attitudes among the respondents and the other remaining variables, bivariate correlations were then conducted (see Table 3). The correlation coefficients indicate that gender role attitudes are correlated with all political variables at different significance levels. This is negatively associated with system justification, satisfaction with life and national identification. Demographic variables matter as well: gender egalitarianism has negative correlations with both gender and age, while it has positive correlations with educational qualification. The results demonstrate that Chinese people who endorse a higher level of egalitarian gender role attitudes hold more negative attitudes toward the social and political system, weaker national identification, and are less satisfied with their lives. On the contrary, Chinese people who show a lower level of egalitarian gender role attitudes (‘gender chauvinism’) tend to believe that their society and polity are in the right order, maintain greater national identification, and are more satisfied with life.

Table 3 Associations between gender egalitarianism and all other variables.
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Multiple regression analyses — with intercepts — were conducted to estimate the relationship between gender role attitudes among the respondents and all other predictor variables. The result of regression analysis is shown in Table 4. The ordinary least squares estimation results indicate that the overall regression is significant (F(6, 878) = 58.01, p < 0.001). According to the Table 4, system justification has significant effect on gender role attitudes. In addition, satisfaction with life, gender, and age have significant negative effects on gender role beliefs, confirming our findings from the bivariate correlation between these variables. Remarkably, our female participants demonstrated a significantly higher level of egalitarian gender role attitudes than male participants.

Table 4 Multiple regression estimation results on Gender egalitarianism.
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Discussion and conclusion

In this article, we first found four indicators, which are male priority, child suffering, gender ideology, marriage and fertility, could reflect one common factor which is gender egalitarianism. This approach sets up a new, refined measurement instrument for future empirical studies of gender role attitudes widely applicable in a Chinese context. Then, we investigated the correlation between young people’s gender role attitudes and their perception of the state. In this way, it can be explained that these four aspects are closely related to the youth mindset regarding gender issues, which are highly influenced by the state-advocated culture and socio-political system. This is essentially consistent with the traditional division between the realms of nei and wai (Rosenlee, 2006), where women who are positioned in the nei realm are allocated domestic work and household management, while men are expected to engage in the extensive wai realm, where literary learnings and the political sphere are primarily involved. Such a division echoes China’s current revitalization of Confucianism in the new millennium, advocated by the PRC authorities as an essential component of Chinese culture and used to reclaim control over the use of Confucius and Confucianism as national icons (Chua, 2001). Particular elements of doctrine include respect for authorities, devotion to the state, social harmony, obedience to superiors, and protection of the family, and are utilized to regulate the people and stabilize society (Chen, 2011; Song, 2003). This revitalization also bespeaks the current perception of gender role attitudes among China’s youth as these attitudes are heavily influenced by such cultural discourse. Such phenomenon has been called ‘socialism-and Confucian-patriarchy hybrid gender (in)equality’ by Ji et al. (2017, 768), who argue that the apparent gender equality of the socialist era was enforced by the state and then further justified by changing gender ideologies. The theorization of nei-wai contributes to understanding the cultural and historical spatial binary of men and women corresponding to Confucianism, whilst the newly added marriage and fertility indicator helps to ameliorate the scale of gender role attitudes in the Chinese context by measuring a consistently existent and heavily influential socio-cultural discourse.

Further, we elucidate the complicated and dynamic pathways through which young people’s gender role attitudes in China correlate with their general system-justifying beliefs, national identification, and life satisfaction, respectively. Although young people in China are believed to be more gender-egalitarian than the older generation (Koo et al., 2020), their degrees of gender egalitarianism vary, revealing different levels of support toward the current political system. Echoing Zuo and Jiang (2009) model of ‘construction of family and state’ (cited in Ji et al., 2017), our results show that gender role attitudes perceived by China’s young are essentially impacted by their stance toward the current political system and the values that the state is promoting. This implies a strong relationship between family and nation in the Chinese context.

For the first research question on whether young people in China with less gender-egalitarian attitudes are more likely to be motivated by system justification, the results suggest they are more likely to have the mindset of justifying the existing socio-political system. In other words, as the Chinese state plays a key role in constructing the present gender norms, young people who favor the current socio-political system tend to support the gender relations it shapes, as a part of supporting the general system. As we discussed in the introduction, Chinese tendencies toward traditional perceptions of gender are derived not only from the long-lasting cultural worship of Confucian thought but also by the state-supported revitalization of Confucianism as a national strategy to stabilize the society and regulate the people. From a top-down perspective, the domestic roles of women are reinforced to promote a retreat to the domestic arena, as marriage is believed necessary to maintain social stability through connecting the government’s political purposes with Confucian values. Restless young single men are seen as a threat to the foundation of Chinese society, while young single women are seen not only as a threat to its moral fabric, but also as free agents, unnatural in failing their duty to carry a child and tame a man (Fincher, 2016). In addition, calling for women’s familial roles and compliance with men and the nation is seen as the central power’s systematic strategy to handle the employment crisis, financial pressures and the working-age labor’s decrease (Fincher, 2018). From a bottom-up perspective, our study corroborates the coherence of public opinions toward traditional gender values and system support among China’s youth, where the top-down state reinforcement of gender inequality aimed at solving social problems and achieving social stability is shown to be working, at least to those who embrace traditional gender values.

For the second research question on whether young people with more gender-egalitarian attitudes are more or less likely to value their Chinese national identity, the results indicate those who are less gender egalitarian tend to exhibit stronger national identification. That is to say, they have a stronger sense of being Chinese. As the Chinese nation has long been represented as ‘a big family’ for Chinese people, President Xi has become established in the media as the father presiding over the family nation. This is to say that a strong, masculine leadership, represented by Xi as ‘the paternalistic patriarch’, is needed for the nation, which is regarded as a big, male-dominated family (Fincher, 2018, 65). To maintain the harmony of the ‘big family’, small families also need to be harmonious. Instead of the individual, a family is seen as a stable social unit in both traditional and contemporary China under the CCP’s governance. Beyond the basic socio-economic functions, a family constitutes a unique social security system that takes responsibility for its ageing members (Eastman, 1988). In China, as a country characterized by a hierarchical power structure, the family is a social institution that bespeaks a cultural value possessing a set of norms that encourage the social practices of individuals. As Ning (1993) illustrated, particularly in the CCP-ruled contemporary China, Confucianism has sanctioned such hierarchical power relations within the patriarchal family structure. Thus, it can be seen that conceiving of self-belonging to the family nation might lead to the acceptance of the state-driven, Confucian-oriented, traditional gender values. Put simply, the more people that acknowledge themselves to be a part of this ‘big family’, the more likely they are to comply with the current condition of gender inequality.

At this point, the media and educational institutions play a significant role in shaping attitudes and beliefs in the context of mainland Chinese, where the media and educational systems may reinforce the idea of a strong national identity, especially emphasizing collective values and unity, which is prioritized over gender egalitarianism. On the one hand, China’s young people “have deep-seated emotional attachments to their national identity” (Gries, 2007: 18). On the other hand, modern historical consciousness in China is largely characterized by the ‘one hundred years of humiliation’ from the mid-1800s to mid-1900s, when China was attacked by imperialists. This cultural memory has been reinforced by the regime’s educational socialization, particularly through the national ‘Patriotic Education Campaign’ started in 1991, through which the party-state has continuously cultivated in young citizens a sense of the superiority of the one-party system (Wang, 2008). Under the long-term media and educational influences of pro-nationalism, China’s young people might have consciously or unconsciously internalized the authoritarian rules believing in the state’s goal of stability maintenance, disagreeing but refraining from taking further action, holding private truths but telling public lies (Lagerkvist, 2010), lacking viable alternative frames, or being misled to support the regime through its inherent framework (Han, 2015).

For the third research question on whether young people with more gender egalitarian attitudes have a higher or lower level of life satisfaction in China, our results show that gender role attitudes among China’s youth are negatively correlated with their life satisfaction. This point can also be explained by the consolidation of state-driven gender norms, in which youth with more egalitarian gender role attitudes are aware of mistreatment due to unequal gendered regulations such as the birth control policies (Wong, 1997), women’s double burden (Thornham and Feng, 2010) and the pay gap (Ji et al., 2017), thereby reducing life satisfaction. By contrast, those with weaker egalitarian gender role attitudes might be more tolerant of this inequality, or perhaps even unlikely to realize that such inequality exists.

Lastly, for demographic factors, our results demonstrate that gender role attitudes are negatively associated with age, which is consistent with the aforementioned studies suggesting that the younger generation tends to be more gender egalitarian in China (Shu and Zhu, 2012; Koo et al., 2020). Moreover, people with higher levels of education are found to be more gender egalitarian, which is consistent with previous research both in the Chinese context (Shu, 2004) and worldwide (e.g., Pampel, 2011). This finding responds to the social condition in China where, due to marketization, young people are more able to access higher education than the senior generation. Additionally, young women demonstrated significantly higher levels of egalitarian gender role attitudes than young men, as shown in Table 4. This finding is consistent with results from worldwide research showing young women to be increasingly better educated than young men (OECD 2023). In China, by 2020, 18.0% of Chinese women had received a college education or higher. This is 1.6% higher than that of men (Liu and Du, 2023), which to some extent explains the higher level of egalitarian gender role attitudes of young women than men in our findings.

In summary, our results have some important implications for gender discourse and policies in contemporary China. Although young people tend to receive higher education and embrace more gender egalitarian attitudes, favoring the political system and feeling satisfied by life seems to either consciously or unconsciously reinforce their tendencies toward existing gender inequalities. If supporting the system means opposing gender equality, not only does this imply that women’s status is in a dire position, it also positions those who desire gender egalitarianism against the state. For policymaking, the Chinese government may need to consider how to balance the public’s growing gender egalitarian opinions and the intention of implementing unequal gender policies in order to avoid potential discontentment from the gender egalitarian group.

In conclusion, this study complements the understanding of gender role attitudes in contemporary China. As one of the first explorative studies to apply the survey method to gender-state dynamics in a (semi-) authoritarian context, the findings merit further research. For instance, the psycho-political antecedents predicting Chinese gender role attitudes, as outlined in this article, are by no means exhaustive. Further research that examines other political, social, cultural and ideological antecedents for gender role attitudes is very much welcomed. Moreover, this study is not without limitations. The data presented in Table 1 illustrates that a significant majority of our participants fall within the 18–35 age bracket, and more than half hold bachelor’s degrees. This suggests that our research findings are primarily applicable to the Chinese youth demographic with relatively high levels of education. As a result, it is prudent to exercise caution when attempting to generalize these research findings. We used an online survey method to keep respondents’ private identification information anonymous to the researcher and other participants, which is expected to encourage more sincere answers by respondents. However, considering the Chinese people’s decade-long self-censorship practices, there is some possibility that they have manipulated some ‘politically correct’ responses in order to avoid potential risks. Therefore, the findings of this study are based on the assumption that survey answers reflect the respondents’ true beliefs and feelings.