Values in Development: New Findings and New Challenges from the World Values Survey |
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| Chair | Ms Kseniya Kizilova (World Values Survey Association ) |
| Coordinator 1 | Dr Tatiana Karabchuk (United Arab Emirates University) |
| Coordinator 2 | Professor Christian Haerpfer (World Values Survey Association) |
| Coordinator 3 | Professor Eduard Ponarin (High School of Economics) |
The world is transforming rapidly in various fields including family structure. However, gender stereotypes remain relatively stable [Alison, Risman 2013]. Women are still perceived predominantly as mothers and housewives in many societes, while their professional status is being neglected [Blumberg 1990]. This situation is typical for agrarian, and less for industrial societies, but no country can boast absolute equality, and women prolong being discriminated at the labor market, in politics, and in the household [Charles 2011].
Many scholars find the most acute gender inequality in the Muslim societies, especially in the Middle East [Afary 2004; Hilsdon, Rozario 2006]. Empirical research show that women in the MENA region strive for more opportunities in the most conservative oil-rich Gulf monarchies as well as in more emancipated Arab countries, but their efforts resulted in very limited success in a few societies [Moghadam 2003; Cherif 2010]. Some scholars associate this case with Islamic religious and cultural legacy [Norris, Inglehart 2003b; Alexander, Welzel 2011], while others argue that economic and institutional explanations are more powerful [Ross 2008; Moghadam 2009]. Feminist critics reveal Orientalist style of thinking about the issue that leads to underestimation of women as actors and presents them as victims and objects of silent submission only [Asad et al. 2013]. Leading theorists of this group dispel a myth about monolythic and unmodifiable Islamic societies, where values are defined by Sharia law and women are forever rightless and voiceless [Charrad 2011]. At the same time some parameters that show female subordinated position in MENA region objectively, such as literacy and income levels, labor force participation, and political leadership [Fish 2002].
European beliefs about Muslim gender attitudes are transferred to Muslim migrants as if those people are unexposed to change. That idea of immutable values brought from sending countries and passed down to the following generations stands behind many anti-migrant actions, and has little to do with reality.
I aim at showing more nuanced picture of gender attitudes of Muslim migrants in Europe using the statement “When jobs are scarce, men should have priority over women” compared simultaneously to local Europeans and to their compatriots back in the sending societies. Using a harmonized dataset combining ESS as the core source, WVS, and EVS, and, I apply non-nested multilevel logistic regression. The survey shows that migrants in general assimilate fast and follow the trend of the receiving society, whereas Muslim migrants are society substantially less egalitarian gender-wise then local Europeans and other migrants (to various extent), however more liberal than their former compatriots. I also disentangle the effects of the particular sending and receiving societies, of Islamic predominance in the country of origin, and of personal religiosity and find that people who originate from Muslim countries are several times less gender egalitarian then those from other settings, but this effect diminishes greatly after migration to Europe.
Due the inclusion of the short version of Portrait value questionnaire (PVQ-21) into the ESS, the Schwartz values are intensively used in comparative research across European countries. However, at the same time the comparative findings from other parts of the World, especially from Africa, are relatively rare. In the light of recent socio-political developments, there is increasing need for the understanding of value-changes, which are taking place in Northern Africa and Middle-East societies.
The World Values Survey, which contains 11 items to measure the Schwartz human values, has been recently fielded in five North African countries, namely Algeria (2014), Egypt (2012), Lebanon (2013), Morocco (2011), and Tunisia (2013). Lately the same questions were asked again but only for young people (15-29 years) in those countries within the SAHWA project (N=10,036, 2015/16). The SAHWA project is a multimethod research project, including ethnographic techniques, a documentary, and the representative Youth survey, which aim is to research youth prospects and perspectives in a context of multiple social, economic and political transitions. Thereby the analyses of youth value structures are especially beneficial, as they are determining the direction of societal transformations.
Therefore, we aim to map the value structure of North African youth, by comparing the results of both mentioned surveys, while focusing on four higher-order values: self-transcendence, conservation, self-enhancement, and openness to change.
As earlier studies have reported several comparability problems of this 11-item scale (Rudnev 2011), we will firsthand conduct a measurement invariance test of the higher-order values, to see if the latent means are at all be comparable across countries. As all indicators are measured with the same response scale, we will also account for the common method variance, by including an additional method factor into the invariance model.
In the 1960s, it was widely held that religion was on the decline. Education, urbanisation, and the rise of secular ideologies would lead religious belief, and religious practice, to wither away (Berger 1962). Yet in decades since, the outbreak of sectarian conflict in formerly 'secular' societies such as Bosnia or Northern Ireland, the rise of religious movements and parties in India, Israel, or the Arab Middle East, the return of religious faith to the post-communist world - as well as the restructuring of global politics along the lines of a 'clash of civilizations' and the rise of international terrorism - have led to a profound questioning of the theory that religious values and identities are inevitably on the wane. This project starts from a striking observation: that contrary to widespread perception, global data from the latest (2011-14) wave of the World Values Surveys and the more recent (2012 and 2015) WIN-Gallup poll of global religiosity show that religious belief, identification and values are in fact in sharp worldwide decline, across almost all major regions. Surprisingly, this trend is now in evidence not only in formerly religious high-income societies such as Ireland or Spain, but also across major developing countries, including Nigeria, India, and Brazil. It is also evident in societies such as the United States, which were long held to be anomalies for secularisation theory, as well as in countries that have seen an upsurge in religious parties and movements, such as India, Israel, and Turkey. We propose a counter-intuitive explanation for this trend: that one of driving factors behind the shift towards greater secularisation has been a rise in the salience of religious conflict. In societies where the threat of religiously-motivated violence has become more salient, urban elites have come to disassociate from religious movements and ideologies. If correct, this theory has an important implication: in a time of perceived religious radicalisation, the increasing salience of religious conflict may alienate public opinion from religious beliefs and identification, and therefore - paradoxically, perhaps – push societies toward secularization.
This paper is analyzing the breakdown of – mainly Communist – values system in coincidence with the break-up of the Soviet Union after December 1991. The paper is analyzing the creation and development of different value systems in the following CIS countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. The main research question is to find out, if certain values, values systems or value clusters have survived in the transformation period between the era of the Soviet Union on the one hand and the post-Soviet era of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on the other. The main research perspective is to find out by comparative empirical analysis, in which value dimensions of cultural, religious and social value systems we can speak of historical continuity and for which value dimensions we are able to speak about the emergence of entirely new value systems, which have not existed at all during the period of the Soviet Union. The study is beginning with an analysis of value systems in the Perestroika period in the final stage of the Soviet Union. The first data point of this comparative analysis is 1990 with surveys from the World Value Survey. This gives us an overview of the structure and composition of cultural, religious and social values in the final historical phase of the Soviet Union, which was characterized by the so-called Perestroika period. The next data points of comparative analysis are the New Democracy Barometer from 1996 and 1998, the World Value Survey from 2000 and the Eurasia Barometer from 2001. The next data point for comparative analysis is the World Values Survey 2005 as well as the European Values Survey from 2008. The most recent data point for analysis is the 6th wave of the World Values Survey, which has been conducted in the CIS area in 2011-2012.