Family, External Environment and Gender Attitudes: Evidence from Students' Survey

We use student survey data to investigate the role of family and environmental influences in shaping gender attitudes within young adults. Our main objective is to test if there is correlation between explicit and implicit gender attitudes amongst this group. We found that although levels of implicit bias (note that we define implicit bias as a stronger association towards men with careers and women with family or higher positive IAT scores.) vary systematically with other demographic characteristics, there is not a consistent correlation between implicit and explicit gender attitudes. We also found that females hold more rigid implicit traditional gender role ideology compared to the males even though females are more likely than males to explicitly lobby for gender equality. We also show that to some degree, the media in its current state has helped reinforce rather than challenge traditional gender role ideology. Individuals who spend more time on social media were found to have more implicit bias than those who spend less time on these platforms. Overall, these results suggest that in order to effectively tackle gender inequality, a wider policy approach is required, one that can address some of these factors that contribute to gender unequal outcomes.