Attitudes towards Gender Equality Does Being a Democracy Matter?

This study contributes to a societal vision of contemporary democracy, a subject that is not sufficiently considered in the research literature, by analyzing the mechanisms underlying the production of egalitarian gender attitudes in less democratic and more democratic societies and concluding on the democratic social context. A comparative analysis of gender attitudes in 72 countries shows that citizens of the most democratized countries have more egalitarian gender attitudes in politics, business and access to university education and employment, and that determinants of gender attitudes vary by sex and socio-political context.