Does a woman’s earnings affect her likelihood of experiencing IPV?

A Newfound Independence

Today’s women are more independent from gendered expectations of women than ever before. On the surface this transition has been relatively smooth. For instance, women have consistently earned more bachelor’s degrees then men, and nine out of ten men claim to be comfortable with women earning more than them. This cultural shift has empowered women to seek opportunities outside of the home and take on new roles within society. Women are accepted as confident, competent leaders who make substantial contributions to the American work force.

Proof of this is seen in the increase in female employment to previously male-dominated jobs, made possible by a revolution in the labor force, improvement in educational opportunities, and changes in the modern family. These changes all contribute to the convergence of gender roles and new family structures.

One of the most significant changes in the modern family is that most women expect to have greater economic responsibility in their families than in the past. Along with this trend, fathers are increasingly contributing to childcare and housework responsibilities. Thus, the stay-at-home expectation for mothers in committed relationships is rapidly changing. Women who are married or are in a committed relationship are in the labor force creating a transition from male dominated single-earning homes to dual-earning homes.

A Gendered Lag

Today’s men face a different story. Rather than encouragement and empowerment that women are increasingly granted in their new societal roles, men are still expected to be macho men’s men, not part-time homemakers. The displacement of long held social norms has left a hole where traditional principles once dictated gender roles. Men are left in limbo as the identity of provider, breadwinner, and head of the household are swept aside by the woman of today. This can lead to the phenomenon known as insecure masculinity.

Insecure masculinity occurs when a man feels emasculated—a loss of manliness and power. Men experiencing insecure masculinity have diverse reactions ranging from withdrawal into one’s self to overt acts of defiance.

What might provoke men to believe that their masculinity is threatened?

Some men feel that their manhood is in question when they do not fit certain gender stereotypes. For example, the hyper-masculine man is considered aggressive, independent, unemotional, and competitive. He has many romantic relationships, is skilled in business, and is ambitious. Self-perception of masculinity is so important that men who feel their masculinity is threatened are compelled to demonstrate their manhood through action.

Manhood is most readily proved through aggression and outward performance. This serves as a face saving technique to restore a positive impression of masculinity or as a way of averting threats to a man’s honor. Sports, fighting, and forms of abuse can be used to prove that a man is dominant.

I propose that the employment of a female partner can have an emasculating effect on men which causes them to be insecure. In extreme cases, intimate partner violence may be used against women as a method to regain men’s masculinity.

Intimate partner violence refers to physical, sexual, or psychological aggression against an intimate partner. Men engage in intimate partner violence as a method of maintaining power and control over their partner.

I use the Violence and Threats of Violence Against Women the United States 1994-1996 survey data for my analysis of intimate partner violence and women out-earning men. This data was using a national random digit dialing sample of 8,000 women 18+ in US homes. The women responded to questions regarding various forms of violence and abuse they experienced. Examples include whether a woman’s partner tries to provoke arguments, tries to limit the respondent’s contact to their friends and family, and whether the partner shouts or swears at her. I use multivariable regressions to analyze how a woman’s difference in earnings from her partner, and education level affect her likelihood of experiencing intimate partner violence.

Intimate Partner Violence
	Model 1		Model 2
	Coefficient	P-Value	Coefficient	P-Value
Income Difference	8.12e-07	0.010*	-----	-----
Education Difference	-----	-----	8.66e-05	0.322
Number of years married	-0.0004	0.003*	-0.0004	0.003*
Experience abuse as a child	0.1761	0.000*	0.1751	0.000*
Married	0.3029	0.044*	0.3094	0.125
Divorced	-0.0314	0.561	-0.0263	0.855
Widowed	-0.056	0.672	-0.0534	0.777
Separated	-0.0039	0.977	--	---
Common Law Marriage	0.5228	0.005*	0.5248	0.023*

Women earning more than their partner is an important indicator of intimate partner violence: For every additional $1,000 a woman makes over her partner, she is .08% more likely to experience intimate partner violence. There was no statistical significance for the difference between levels of education between partners.

One in four women experiences intimate partner violence in their lifetime. This is a tragedy in itself, but more concerning is the fact that the changes in women’s social position may actually cause the amount of intimate partner violence to increase. The annual growth rate of women in the labor force is 2.6%. As women increasingly earn higher wages and occupy more prestigious positions in society, adjustments must be made to fit new dynamics in relationships. Specifically, social and cultural shifts associated with the gender identity of men are necessary to keep up with the progressive nature of women's gender roles.

Over time, cultural values will change to reflect a compatible man of today for the woman of today; I am hopeful that the rate of intimate partner violence will drop.

Beyond Bundesmutti: Gender and Political Participation in Reunified Germany

After World War Two, Germany was divided into two states: the American-influenced BRD (West Germany) and the Soviet-influenced DDR (East Germany). While West Germany initially attempted to revert to "normal" gender roles after the war (Rueschemeyer 2009), East Germany's new government was ideologically committed to promoting gender equality, especially in the form of women's workforce participation.

When the two Germanies reunified in 1990, it certainly looked like East Germany had succeeded. 90% of East German women worked, while only 60% did so in West Germany (Rueschemeyer 2009). 1/3 of the Volkskammer (East German legislature) members were women (Rueschemeyer 2009) before the government collapsed, and East German women often played major roles in the community projects and political groups that reunification generated (Rueschemeyer 2009). While women in West Germany had been forced to fight from the bottom up for things like a married woman's right to work without her husband's permission (Wangerin 2010) and maternity leave (Rueschemeyer 2010) before those at the top joined the push for equality (Woodward 2012), women in East Germany were brought into the workforce with the help of top-down policies such as state childcare, free contraceptives, and generous maternity leave (Rueschemeyer 2009). When East Germany was absorbed into the BRD, the disappearance or reduction of many of these services and reluctance on the part of East German women to leave the job market and become housewives contributed to a soaring unemployment rate in the former East Germany (Wangerin 2010, Rueschemeyer 2009).

Angela Merkel and the Rhombus of Power

Since state ideology certainly seems to have an effect on women's employment rates and attitudes toward work in the former Germanies, I wondered what effect the differing ideologies might have had on women's political participation. On the surface, it seemed like East Germany's official emphasis on women's emancipation might have left a legacy of high political participation by women–after all, Putin's main contender for the title of "Most Powerful Person in Europe" is an East German woman. However, one highly visible success story is not enough to prove a point. To get a better idea of variations in women's political participation by region, I decided to examine voting rates and the rate at which women were directly elected to the Bundestag (legislature). This meant that I could analyze both everyday participation and elite participation, which would provide a better picture of what was going on.

For my analysis of voter participation, I used voter demographics data provided by the German government. Although I wanted to focus on the Bundestag elections from 1990 (right after reunification) to 2013, the data from the 1994 and 1998 elections were mysteriously absent. This forced me to omit those years. In the years that data was available for, the data was already broken down by gender and region, and gave percent participation for each gender in the East and the West. I calculated the difference between men's percent participation and women's percent participation in each of these regions. It was important to do this by region because voting rates are lower overall in former East Germany. The chart above shows the differences (by percent) between the genders. A positive number indicates that the percentage of men voting was higher than the percentage of women, while a negative number indicates the opposite. Although the difference doesn't look that big, it is worth noting that men were consistently voting slightly more than women in the West, while women were consistently voting slightly more than men in the East. A t-test determined that there was a statistically significant difference.

The implications of this are really interesting to consider. Voter participation is lower in the East, but women participate a little more relative to men in the East than they do in the West. They still have lower participation rates than their counterparts in the West, but they seem to be the more committed group of voters in the East. Although four disillusioning decades in a single-party state is almost definitely a contributing factor to the East's lower voting rates, can the DDR also be credited with women's slightly higher participation rates? Variables like religion (atheism is especially prevalent in the East) are probably playing a role, but the effect that the DDR had on women's voting rates merits further study.

To analyze elite political participation, I used the results from the 1994 and 2013 Bundestag elections. I focused on directly elected candidates because gender seemed less likely to be a factor in the election of party list candidates. In this analysis, data from Berlin had to be excluded because it was too difficult to tell which districts had been in which area of the city during its division. Ignoring Berlin, I found that in 1994, 13.7% of the directly elected MdB from the West were women, while 13.6% of those from the East were women. In 2013, 20.3% of directly elected MdB from the West were women, while 24.5% of those from the East were women. Although there was no statistically significant difference between East and West, there was clearly an overall increase in the rates at which women were being elected. However, the fact that I was focusing on only two elections, only had data on who had won (not on everyone who had run), and didn't know which districts were considered safe for a certain party limited what I could determine from this analysis. In the future, it would be interesting to see whether the rates at which women are running for office coincide with the rates at which they are winning election. I would also be interested to see if parties could be favoring a certain gender in nominating candidates for safe districts.

Overall, I felt my study mostly taught me how much is still unknown. There appear to be at least some gender differences between East and West Germany, but the complexity of the other issues surrounding German reunification and the relative newness of Germany as a unified country make it difficult to determine how significant and deeply-rooted these differences truly are.

Do Government Systems Impact Gender Roles? Case Study of Women in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

For centuries, a Confucian culture of male dominance has shaped gender roles in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. During the 20^th century, however, these Chinese territories experienced starkly different political developments. Now China is an authoritarian country where the Communist Party has a monopoly on power. Moreover, Hong Kong is an autonomous territory that is administered by Beijing, but enjoys some political freedom. Finally, Taiwan is a healthy democracy that is, in practice, independent from the Mainland.

Members of the Chinese Communist Party's top decision-
making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, led by
Mr. Xi Jinping. China has never admitted a woman to its
highest ranks. Image source here.

On the surface, women’s political participation in these societies is highly varied. First, China’s top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, has seven male members and has never admitted a female. Second, six out of ten political parties with the most seats in Hong Kong’s parliament are chaired by women. Third, Taiwan’s people elected their first female president this year, after a presidential race that was dominated by two women. Indeed, it seems like Beijing still embraces Confucius’ belief that the ideal state is ruled by wise men. In contrast, female politicians in Hong Kong are on equal footing with men, and gender is not even a factor in Taiwan’s politics.

Six out of ten of Hong Kong's major political parties, based on percentage of
representatives in the Legislative Council, are currently led by women.
Images compiled from Wikipedia and South China Morning Post.

After reviewing existing literature, however, I learned that women actively facilitated political changes in all three territories. Mao Zedong, who led the Communist Party when it established the People’s Republic of China, famously said that “women hold up half the sky.” He advocated gender equality and honored women who were loyal to the Party. The defeated Kuomintang Party left the Mainland and set up their government on Taiwan in 1949. This party enshrined a reserved seats system in Taiwan’s Constitution, requiring that parties slate female candidates or risk losing seats in the legislature. When China absorbed Hong Kong in 1997, women comprised 12% of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. Today, women make up 19% of the legislative body.

Taiwan's recent presidential election featured a bipartisan competition
between Democratic Progressive Party candidate Ms. Tsai Ing-Wen and
Kuomintang candidate Ms. Hung Hsiu-chu. The KMT later replaced
Ms. Hung with Mr. Eric Chu. Ms. Tsai won the election and assumes office
in May. Image from Voice of America News.

My research aims to determine whether diverse political institutions can affect long-term attitudes about the roles of women in politics and society. I focus on China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan because these territories share the same history, but differ in their current systems of government. My theory is that as governments allow women to participate in the political process, women’s expectations for their place in the workforce will expand. In other words, an increase in female political engagement should lead women to perceive a greater professional role for themselves.

To test my theory, I analyzed survey responses gathered by a reputable international organization called the World Values Survey (WVS) from China in 2007 and 2012, Hong Kong in 2005 and 2013, and Taiwan in 2006 and 2012. WVS partners with local researchers every few years to interview a sample of at least 1,000 people in each territory. Each sample is drawn randomly so that the views expressed accurately reflect the values of the entire population. I measured the independent variable, or causal factor, with responses that women in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan gave to questions about their level of political engagement. The dependent variable, or outcome of interest, was how these same women perceived their role in the labor force. I created graphs to show how women’s responses in each territory changed over time, and discovered significant results, leading me to draw wider conclusions and predict future trends.

I found that women in Hong Kong and Taiwan are more engaged in politics than women in China. The percentage of Hong Kong’s women who said that politics is a “very important” or “rather important” part of their lives jumped from 25.8% in 2005 to 45.7% in 2013. Likewise, many more Taiwanese women report membership in a political party, bringing the figure from 3.0% in 2006 to 19.6% in 2012. Contrarily, figures for Chinese women declined on both measures. Nevertheless, women from all three territories increasingly disagree that men make better political leaders than women. 

 

I found that overall, women in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan not only feel they have a right to work, but also desire to work for pay. This trend is consistent for women in China, but mixed for women in Hong Kong in Taiwan. Meanwhile, the growth rate for women’s participation in professional associations is equally positive for Hong Konger and Taiwanese women, but negative for Chinese women.

In conclusion, women in China are gradually accepting the idea of female politicians and expressing a desire to work. Chinese women can most effectively expand their roles in politics and society by engaging with the Communist Party and participating in Party-approved women’s organizations, such as the All-China Women’s Federation. After only a few years, Hong Kong’s women report much greater participation in government and labor. The best way to continue this trend is to institutionalize women’s engagement so that lingering Confucian norms do not deter women’s involvement in the public sphere. Finally, women in Taiwan are earning top positions in government. Similarly, their membership in professional associations is growing and their support for women’s employment is increasing. The success of Taiwan’s women stems from a political system that has mandated female representation for decades.

Although my findings are specific to Chinese territories, they are useful for further research and wider application. For example, authoritarian or democratic regimes can experiment with institutions to promote women’s political and professional participation. Additionally, women’s rights groups can learn how to expand gender roles in traditionally conservative societies.