The Study of Value Change Using European Values Surveys 1 |
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| Chair | Professor Hermann Duelmer (University of Cologne ) |
| Coordinator 1 | Professor Ruud Luijkx (Tilburg University) |
| Coordinator 2 | Dr Malina Voicu (GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne) |
The International Social Survey Program's studies of national identity have measured national pride at three time points between 1995 and 2013. Three scales have been used: 1) five agree-disagreement items measuring patriotism, 2) items measuring pride in national achievements in 10 areas (e.g. economic. military, sports, government), and 3) a global expression of national pride. National pride is examined at the macro-level (e.g. GNP, historical background, government policies) and at the micro-level (e.g. cohort, education, gender, majority/minority member of nation). Both general and within country trends are also tracked. Age-period-cohort analysis indicates that national pride has declined as a result of globalization and as a reaction to the extreme, destructive nationalism of the past. But some signs of resurgent nationalistic pride are detected.
Traditionally, men are considered to be the breadwinners, while women’s main social role concerns taking care of children and the household. However, today the difference between gender roles is becoming less clear. In most of the European countries, childcare institutions and services make the household burden easier, and the traditional life pattern centered on marriage and having kids is more often regarded as only one of the possible alternatives. Women gain wider access to education and labor market. However, despite the fact that women do not have lower education as compared to men they are often less advantaged in making their career. In other words, although women manage to have rather higher level of human capital, they are unable to make full use of it in their professional activity and this hinders economic development. The ground for this lies in structure of their work values and job preferences because they have to take into other spheres of life.
Notwithstanding, passive acceptance of gender equality is not sufficient for changing the situation in the society. Women have to be ready to apply the “gender equality” strategies that they approve. One of such strategies is the achievement motivation that is reflected both in work values and in the assessment of some aspects of their current job.
The study aims to disclose the effect of gender attitudes both on micro- and macrolevel on achievement motivation of men and women. Cross-cultural dataset allows us to disclose both individual and country level predictors of female and male work values and job preferences. The dataset is the fifth wave of European Social Survey because it comprises a battery of questions of work values. Multilevel regression modeling is used.
According to the results, women are less satisfied with different aspects of their jobs and have lower achievement motivation compared to men. Gender attitudes on both individual and country level are positively associated with the achievement motivation. Along with that, the effect of gender attitudes is rather strong for women and absent for men. In the broad context, it indicates that it is mainly the women’s gender roles that are transforming. Men continue regarding the career is very important. This finding is line with explanation that men face more losses than women when they put aside their career (Croft et al. 2015).
On the country level both gender inequality index and mean gender attitudes in a country influence work values and job preferences reflecting achievement motivation. The cross-level interaction has shown that the difference between men and women in work values and job preferences is stronger is countries with the higher level of subjective gender inequality. In the other words, the achievement motivation of women depends upon the general level of gender equality in the country. At the same time, the interaction effect for objective gender equality is insignificant. More broadly, changing gender attitudes in the country has an impact upon female motivation.
Moral rules like ‘Thou shalt not kill, not steal, not cheat’ exist in every society. In traditional societies such rules have to be followed strictly (moral universalism/absolutism). In the highly insecure environment of traditional societies, strict rule obedience serves the psychological function of enabling individuals to cope with high stress: given by infallible, benevolent metaphysical powers, moral rules ensure maximal predictability. Strict rule obedience ensures that things turn out well, at least in the long run. Modernisation and secularisation change the application mode of moral rules. People become increasingly responsible for the consequences of right actions too. Therefore, conflicts arise between moral rules and the reasonableness of the foreseeable consequences of rule obedience. In secularised societies, formerly strict moral rules become prima facie rules which are applied according to the context (moral contextualism/restricted moral universalism): grey areas of legitimate moral dissent arise. In the highly secure environment of modern welfare states, people are better able to tolerate moral ambiguity. Citizens have more freedom to make self-determined moral decisions. Increasing tolerance, however, does not mean that basic moral rules lose their universal validity. Distinguishing under what conditions an exception to a valid moral rule might be justifiable requires cognitive skills. Based on these considerations it is expected that younger cohorts are morally more tolerant than older ones. More highly educated people, however, should be better able to distinguish under what conditions moral rule obedience is required and under what conditions an exception might be morally justifiable. The empirical results confirm these expectations.