Sibling gender composition’s effect on education: evidence from China

We use a population survey of the Chinese adult population—2010 Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS) modeled after the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find that being the oldest child gives an education benefit to male and not female children who are often assigned supervisory roles for younger siblings. Most importantly, an increase in the fraction of female siblings leads to a significant increase in education of Chinese men and to a lesser extent Chinese women. This effect is concentrated among those with rural Hukou. In China, male children absorbed more education resources so that in a credit constrained family, increases in fraction of siblings who are sisters frees up resources for educating boys. This is less so for girls since their education was lower and additional resources would not be used for them.     

The effects of gender on climate change knowledge and concern in the American public

This study tests theoretical arguments about gender differences in scientific knowledge and environmental concern using 8 years of Gallup data on climate change knowledge and concern in the US general public. Contrary to expectations from scientific literacy research, women convey greater assessed scientific knowledge of climate change than do men. Consistent with much existing sociology of science research, women underestimate their climate change knowledge more than do men. Also, women express slightly greater concern about climate change than do men, and this gender divide is not accounted for by differences in key values and beliefs or in the social roles that men and women differentially perform in society. Modest yet enduring gender differences on climate change knowledge and concern within the US general public suggest several avenues for future research, which are explored in the conclusion.     

Center-Based Care in the Context of One-Child Policy in China: Do Child Gender and Siblings Matter?

We examined the effects of child gender and siblings on center-based care enrollment in the context of China’s one-child policy and its tradition of preference to have many children, especially sons. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) 2000 wave and multilevel logistic regression models, we found that children without siblings consistently had higher odds of receiving center-based care than those with siblings, while there was no evidence that child gender mattered. Further analyses did not show evidence that the effects of child gender and siblings were moderated by household and community resources or local one-child policy. However, we did find that the presence of male, older, or school-age siblings (as compared to female, younger, or preschool-age siblings) reduced preschoolers’ odds of receiving center-based care. This was possibly because parents valued formal education much more than preschools and thus focused more on boys when they entered elementary schools than on their sisters or younger brothers. These findings suggest that more attention needs to be given to the equal education opportunities for boys and girls as well as for children with and without siblings.     

The effect of female education on marital matches and child health in Bangladesh

This paper examines the effects of female education on marriage outcomes by exploiting the exogenous variation generated by the Female Secondary School Stipend Program in Bangladesh, which made secondary education free for rural girls. Our findings show that an additional year of female education leads to an increase in 0.72 years of husband’s education and that better educated women pair with spouses who have better occupations and are closer in age to their own, suggesting assortative mating. Those educated women appear to experience greater autonomy in making decisions on receiving their own health care and visiting their family. Furthermore, educated women have lower fertility and use more maternal health care, and their children have better health outcomes than those of less-educated women. Overall, our results suggest that the marriage market is one of the channels through which women’s education affects their life outcomes.     

International Migration, Sex Ratios, and the Socioeconomic Outcomes of Nonmigrant Mexican Women

This article assesses whether international migration from Mexico affects the marital, fertility, schooling, and employment outcomes of the Mexican women who remain behind by exploiting variation over time as well as across Mexican states in the demographic imbalance between men and women. I construct a gauge of the relative supply of men for women of different age groups based on state-level male and female population counts and the empirically observed propensity of men of specific ages to marry women of specific ages. Using Mexican census data from 1960 through 2000, I estimate a series of models in which the dependent variable is the intercensus change in an average outcome for Mexican women measured by state and for specific age groups, and the key explanatory variable is the change in the relative supply of men to women in that state/age group. I find that the declining relative supply of males positively and significantly affects the proportion of women who have never been married as well as the proportion of women who have never had a child. In addition, states experiencing the largest declines in the relative supply of men also experience relatively large increases in female educational attainment and female employment rates. However, I find little evidence that women who do marry match to men who are younger or less educated than themselves.     

Differences in the process of earnings determination and inequality between women and men in South Korea

Women have increasingly participated in the labor force in South Korea over the past thirty years. Making up 30% of the labor force in 1960, they grew to comprise 47% by 1990. The economic status of female workers has also improved relative to men; the percentage of female wages to male wages increased from 44.1 in 1971 to 53.5 in 1990. Against this historical backdrop, the author examines the process of earnings determination of workers and assesses the explanatory power of human capital and sex segregation theory on earnings inequality between women and men in the South Korean labor market. This is done by analyzing the 1977-90 waves of the Occupational Wage Survey, a pooled cross-section and time series data set for all non-agricultural occupations. Two separate regressions for men and women are estimated using two-stage weighted least squares methods. It is found after analysis that education and tenure have positive effects on logged earnings. Employment in occupations with greater numbers of women tends to lower workers' earnings regardless of their sex, but women are penalized to a four times greater extent than men for working with other women in occupations. Sex segregation becomes insignificant in lowering women's earnings level when occupational groups are controlled. Finally, the inequality in earnings between genders decreased over the period 1977-90 during which women's earnings increased more than those of men.     

Education and the Gender Gaps in Health and Mortality

The positive associations between education and health and survival are well established, but whether the strength of these associations depends on gender is not. Is the beneficial influence of education on survival and on self-rated health conditioned by gender in the same way, in opposite ways, or not at all? Because women are otherwise disadvantaged in socioeconomic resources that are inputs to health, their health and survival may depend more on education than will men??s. To test this hypothesis, we use data from the National Health Interview Survey-Linked Mortality Files (NHIS-LMF). We find that education??s beneficial influence on feeling healthy and on survival are conditional on gender, but in opposite ways. Education has a larger effect on women??s self-rated health than on men??s, but a larger effect on men??s mortality. To further examine the mortality results, we examine specific causes of death. We find that the conditional effect is largest for deaths from lung cancer, respiratory disease, stroke, homicide, suicide, and accidents. Because women report worse health but men??s mortality is higher, education closes the gender gap in both health and mortality.     

Harassment Patterns and Risk Profile in Spanish Trans Persons

This article describes the harassment patterns and the risk profile in trans people living in Spain. A sample of 212 trans persons, aged 10–62, participated in this cross-sectional study. Results showed a high percentage of harassment (59.9%) and frequency of daily harassment (12.6%), especially verbal attacks (59%) that occurred in public spaces (49.1%) and within educational contexts (46.2%). Harassment is more prevalent in trans women than men. Those who disclose their gender identities at a younger age experience higher percentages and frequency of harassment than those who disclose at an older age. They also suffer more harassment of different types. The risk profile of harassment indicates that older trans women are more likely to suffer harassment than younger ones, and the risk decreases each year they delay their gender identity disclosure. The elimination of transphobic attitudes and the promotion of gender justice should be priority strategies in Spain.     

A Comparison of Trans Women,Trans Men,Genderqueer Individuals,and Cisgender Brothers and Sisters on the Bem Sex-Role Inventory: Ratings by Self and Siblings

A U.S. national sample of 295 transgender adults (trans women, trans men, and genderqueer individuals) and their cisgender siblings completed the Bem Sex-Role Inventory about their siblings as well as themselves, which enabled a comparison between self-perceptions and sibling’s perceptions of personality characteristics. Self-reported personality characteristics scored as feminine of trans women were not statistically different from those of their cisgender sisters, but they were significantly higher than self-reported femininity scores of trans men, genderqueer individuals, and cisgender brothers. Self-reported personality characteristics scored as masculine of trans men did not differ significantly from those of their cisgender brothers, but they were higher than those of trans women. Trans men and cisgender brothers were viewed by their siblings in a more sex-typed way than they rated themselves, whereas trans women and cisgender sisters were rated by their siblings in a less sex-typed way than they viewed themselves.     

Sibship Characteristics and Transition to First Marriage in Taiwan: Explaining Gender Asymmetries

Sociologists have long been interested in the effects of sibship structures. Although previous research generally focuses on the impacts of sibship characteristics on educational outcomes, these characteristics may also affect individuals?? decisions about marriage by shaping their resource availability, parental expectations, or social skills and contacts. Using a nationally representative sample from Taiwan, we examine how sibship size, birth-order rank, and sibship sex composition are associated with men??s and women??s transitions to first marriage. The analysis shows that men who have no male siblings tend to accelerate their rates of entering marriage. By contrast, women with more siblings or in earlier birth positions are likely to do the same. We argue that the findings for women reflect the influences of sibship structures on household resource allocation, whereas those for men have to do with the cultural emphasis on sons?? responsibility for carrying on the family lineage. Moreover, Chinese cultural norms that prescribe different roles for married sons and daughters account for the asymmetrical mechanisms revealed for men and women in Taiwan. Results from this study thus underscore the need to consider family norms and cultural contexts in explaining the transition to marriage.     

Education,religion, and voter preference in a Muslim country

Using a unique survey of adults in Turkey, we find that an increase in educational attainment, due to an exogenous secular education reform, decreased women’s propensity to identify themselves as religious, lowered their tendency to wear a religious head cover (head scarf, turban, or burka) and increased the tendency for modernity. We also find that education has a negative impact on women’s propensity to vote for Islamic parties. The effect of female education on religiosity is driven by those who reside in urban areas. There is no statistically significant impact of education on male religiosity and tendency to vote for Islamic parties. Increased education does not influence the propensity to cast a vote in national elections for either men or women.     

Knowledge of and attitudes toward aging among non-elders: gender and race differences

Although the aging process begins at birth, fears about late adulthood can foster anxiety in younger cohorts about this time of life. This study examines the relationship between non-elderly subjects' (n = 884, 18-55 years) knowledge of and anxieties regarding personal aging and their gender and race. We hypothesized that non-elderly women and persons of color, those who will experience multiple jeopardy in their own late life, would report greater anxiety about their own aging process than did men and majority group members. Women did report lower income and education levels, less knowledge of aging, greater anxiety related to their own aging process, and more time involved in caregiving activities. People of color also differed from Caucasians in certain dimensions of knowledge and anxiety. Implications from these results include the creation of public educational strategies and the organization of women and minorities to more actively address the development and shape of age-related policies.     

The reversal of the gender gap in education and relative divorce risks: A matter of alternatives in partner choice?

Recent evidence from the United States suggests that the reversal of the gender gap in education was associated with changes in relative divorce risks: hypogamous marriages, where the wife was more educated than the husband, used to have a higher divorce risk than hypergamous marriages, where the husband was more educated, but this difference has disappeared. One interpretation holds that this may result from cultural change, involving increasing social acceptance of hypogamy. We propose an alternative mechanism that need not presuppose cultural change: the gender-gap reversal in education has changed the availability of alternatives from which highly educated women and men can choose new partners. This may have lowered the likelihood of women leaving husbands with less education and encouraged men to leave less educated spouses. We applied an agent-based model to twelve European national marriage markets to illustrate that this could be sufficient to create a convergence in divorce risks.     

Do Values Matter? The Impact of Work Ethic and Traditional Gender Role Values on Female Labour Market Supply

This article aims to gain a better understanding of the explanatory value of work ethic and traditional gender role values with regard to variation in female labour market supply. Although women’s labour market participation has increased dramatically over the past decades, it still lacks behind that of men. A high female participation rate is desirable for several reasons, for instance to cover rising costs due to the ageing of society. The existing literature has mostly focused on micro-economic and macro factors to explain differences between women in participation rate. However, more recently it has been argued that women’s values may also play an important role in women’s labour market decisions. Work ethic, expressing the moral duty to work in terms of paid employment, is argued to positively affect women’s labour supply. However, it is argued that it can have negative implications too if women who hold more traditional gender role values interpret work and work ethic in terms of housework or in terms of paid employment for men only. This exemplifies the need to study both values at the same time. We used longitudinal Dutch data (LISS panel, 2007–2010) and estimated both cross-sectional and longitudinal models. Both types of models revealed a similar pattern: work ethic is positively associated with women’s labour market participation, but only if we take into account women’s gender role values, which negatively relate to women’s labour market supply.     

Education and Male-Female Differences in Later-Life Cognition: International Evidence From Latin America and the Caribbean

This study explores the role of early-life education for differences in cognitive functioning between men and women aged 60 and older from seven major urban areas in Latin America and the Caribbean. After documenting statistically significant differences in cognitive functioning between men and women for six of the seven study sites, I assess the extent to which these differences can be explained by prevailing male-female differences in education. I decompose predicted male-female differences in cognitive functioning based on various statistical models for later-life cognition and find robust evidence that male-female differences in education are a major driving force behind cognitive functioning differences between older men and women. This study therefore suggests that early-life differences in educational attainment between boys and girls during childhood have a lasting impact on gender inequity in cognitive functioning at older ages. Increases in educational attainment and the closing of the gender gap in education in many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean may thus result in both higher levels and a more gender-equitable distribution of later-life cognition among the future elderly in those countries.     

性别差异视角下的流动人口迁移距离及其影响因素——基于对上海流动人口的分析

通过对流动人口迁移距离性别差异的考察发现:(1)女性流动人口的平均迁移距离长于男性23.1千米,个体因素、迁移特征、经济社会因素对男性、女性流动人口的迁移距离存在着不同方向和不同程度的影响。少数民族和农村户籍的女性流动人口的迁移距离明显长于男性。(2)随受教育程度的提高,女性迁移距离不断增加,初中、高中、大学和研究生学历的女性流动人口的迁移距离分别增加0.062、0.058、0.098和0.170个单位。(3)女性流动人口的迁移受到距离的阻抗作用强度弱于男性,距离每增加1%,流入的女性流动人口规模降低1.090%,而男性为1.275%。(4)引入经济发展差距(GDP)和收入差距变量后,各变量的影响程度和方向发生变化,女性表现出学历、收入水平越高迁移得越远的特征。     

Violence against bisexuals, gays and lesbians in Mexico City

An essential premise of this work is that three dominant ideologies explain oppression against BGL, as a result of a gender system: adhesion to gender stereotypes, androcentrism and heterosexism. Three hundred eighteen bisexual and gay males (BG) and 188 bisexual and lesbian females (BL) were surveyed. By means of a self-applied questionnaire, variables of interest were researched. The following trends were observed: an important number of men and women interviewed suffered violence in their childhood and adolescence because they defied gender stereotypes, and not because of their sexual orientation; BG males were more often victims of violence than BL females. Within the BG group, those who challenged gender stereotypes were more frequently attacked than those who did not; men were identified as aggressors more frequently than women; and in the BG group, gender stereotype transgression was associated with the perception of suffering violence in the future.     

Gender and Aging in the Developing World: Where Are the Men?

In recent years, both population aging and gender issues have gained prominence in international forums concerned with population. It is frequently asserted or implied that older women are universally more vulnerable to social, economic, and health disadvantages than older men. The most significant manifestation of this exclusive concern with women when considering gender and aging is the Plan of Action adopted by the Second World Assembly on Aging in 2002. The assumed relative disadvantage of elderly women is commonly attributed to gender differences in earlier life experiences. But are older women truly disadvantaged globally with respect to all or most essential aspects of well‐being? The authors provide empirical evidence that clearly shows that older women are not invariably disadvantaged vis‐à‐vis men. In particular, they call into question the wisdom and equity of a virtually exclusive emphasis on the needs of women when incorporating gender concerns into policies and programs related to aging. A more balanced perspective that recognizes gender as a potential, but not necessarily central, marker of vulnerability for various aspects of well‐being in specific settings and times, and that allows for male as well as female disadvantage, would serve the current and future elderly generations far better.     

Gender and changing generational relations: Spouse choice in Indonesia

Many Asian societies are undergoing a nuptiality transition that is not only tied integrally to other aspects of family organization, but is also often more complex than standard studies of female age at marriage can reveal. To comprehend some of this complexity, we focus on the patterns of spouse choice for both men and women in central Java. The extent of parental control over mate selection is examined for change over time, gender differences, and likely determinants, including family class, education, premarital work, and residence. It is argued that the current marriage transition in Indonesia reflects both gender and generational hierarchies in the Javanese family system. The analysis is conducted using a multinomial logit model; in general, it yields results strongly supportive of the argument that the determinants of spouse selection differ by gender. The results also show that although there is a dramatic shift towards self-choice marriages, it is occurring within the context of historical and institutional factors specific to Javanese society.