Building: Main Venue Building
Room: room 8
Date: 2017-02-08 04:30 PM – 06:00 PM
Last modified: 2017-01-23
Abstract
Recent theories focusing on the role of gender equality in fertility patterns predict that as the women revolution develops, fertility should increase (Goldscheider et al. 2010;Esping-Andersen and Billari, 2015). Female revolution is understood as the process underlying the transformation of societies from gender-traditional to egalitarian. Fertility is understood as the number of children that individuals have during their life-course, and it is the outcome of various factors, for example fertility intentions and fertility ideals. Previous research investigated the association between gender equality or gender ideology and fertility intentions, with mixed results.
In this paper I investigate if and how individuals’ gender ideology is associated with preferences regarding the ideal number of children for a family. I hypothesize that individuals with more gender equal ideology have a lower ideal number of children, compared with individuals with more traditional gender ideology. Preliminary results using data from the International Social Survey Program 2012 seem to confirm in part such hypothesis. The results contribute to the general debate on gender equality and fertility focusing more specifically on the ideological change brought about by the gender revolution, and the key role of ideal number of children for fertility.