Telecommunication Ties and Gender Ideologies in the Age of Globalization: An Analysis of 47 Countries

• In Event: 512 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Shifting Gender Ideologies

Abstract

Scholars have posed different hypotheses on the impact of global telecommunications on value orientations. We analyze and characterize the global telecommunication network, and test a series of hypotheses on the relationship between three types of telephone ties (ties with the global society, ties with Western nations, and ties within cultural, religious, political or geographical groups of nations) and gender values. We use multilevel models and data at two levels, between‐country telecommunications network data from TeleGeography and individual‐level data (N = 70,000) of people living in 47 countries from the World Value Survey waves III and IV. Countries with high degree of communication insulation, measured as high percent of within-group ties, have less egalitarian attitudes toward gender equality. This negative effect of group insulation depresses the positive effects of young cohorts, college educated, and those of higher income. Embedment in a “localized” information diffusion network and isolation from the global communication is associated with less egalitarian attitude toward gender equality, but neither the number of global ties nor ties with Western countries influences gender attitudes.

Authors

• Xiaoling Shu, University of California-Davis

• George Barnett, University of California-Davis

• Robert W. Faris, University of California-Davis