Gender Norms and Factor Analysis of Attitudes in Bangladesh and India (presented June 2014 at GIGA in Hamburg - Institute of Asian Studies research). Gender Norms and Factor Analysis: A Sociological Reinterpretation By Wendy Olsen with Nik Loynes Abstract Indian women are strongly at risk of domestic violence (one-third having experienced violence, and 9% having had sexual violence) and in Bangladesh violence against women is also common. Among the precursors to violence are the tensions both women and men feel about the contradictory expectations societies lay upon women: to be bearers of honour and modernity; and yet also to be traditional housewives. In this paper we analyse the attitudes for all-India and for Bangladesh, bringing into direct comparison attitudes about the justifiability of wife-beating (a private matter? Indians being more accepting of it, overall), and attitudes toward household decision making (Bangladesh residents being more pro-women or egalitarian in their views). We find these attitudes diverse, showing that not all individuals agree with the social norms, and in turn more egalitarian attitudes are associated with women engaging in modern, salaried, or causal labouring on a commercial (paid) basis. Other women, working in the home or farm, tend to have more traditional attitudes. In conclusion the social norms affect economic activity rates. Background The research presented here is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK and the Department for International Development (DFID) UK. The project is titled Gender Norms and Labour Supply in Rural India and Bangladesh, 2014-2016. We plan primary data collection in 3 Indian rural areas and in rural Bangladesh in 2015. Meanwhile we are analysing secondary data on women’s labour supply and the attitudes people have about women and work. I acknowledge the help of Nik Loynes in data analysis- thanks Nik.

1. 'Gender Norms and Factor Analysis:
A Sociological Reinterpretation'
2014 Wendy Olsen and Nik Loynes
University of Manchester

2. Women’s Labour Force Participation
Fell in India By All Measures 2004-2010.
A stylized fact about India not Bangladesh:
INDIA EPW 2012

3. Content of Briefing
 1. general approaches to measuring
attitudes
 Norms, roles, attitudes, beliefs, desires
 Agent orientations vs. structures
 2. specific issues of gender roles
 An illustration using sociology
 3. Findings: attitudes and employment
 Comparison DHS 2007 vs. NFHS 2006)
 4. Change over time in S.Asian contexts
 Context-dependent attitude measures
 Findings for Bangladesh DHS 2006/7
 Vs. India NFHS 2005/6
 5. Linking change to employment
 Logistic regression results
3 Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context

4. General
approaches to
measuring
attitudes
Three Broad Schools of
Thought
 Norms, roles, attitudes, beliefs, desires
 Agent orientations
4 Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context

5. A FamousTheory
The theory places India in a
particular ‘place’ due to
broad social norm
tendencies.
India is strong on
conservative values but also
strong on the self-
enhancement impulse that
is often (elsewhere)
associated with
individualism.
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
5
 ROCCAS, S., SCHWARTZ,S. H. & AMIT,A. 2010. PersonalValue
Priorities and National Identification. Political Psychology, 31, 393-419.
 SCHWARTZ,S. H., MELECH, G., LEHMANN,A., BURGESS, S., HARRIS,
M. & OWENS,V. 2001. Extending the cross-cultural validity of the theory
of basic human values with a different method of measurement. Journal of
Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32, 519-542.
 SCHWARTZ,S. H. & RUBEL,T. 2005. Sex differences in value priorities:
Cross-cultural and multimethod studies. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 89, 1010-1028.
 SCHWARTZ,S. H., SAGIV, L. & BOEHNKE, K. 2000.Worries and
values. Journal of Personality, 68, 309-346.
 SCHWARTZ,S. H. & TESSLER,R. C. 1972.TEST OF A MODEL FOR
REDUCING MEASURED ATTITUDE-BEHAVIOR
DISCREPANCIES. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24,225-&.

6. Three Broad
Schools ofThought
First school: problem of
universalistic reductive
individualism
Second school: a mixed and
confusing terrain, allowing for
diversity within the society
Third school: may include
GAD,WID, and qualitative…
 Norms, roles, attitudes, beliefs, desires
 1) idealised psychometric approaches,
e.g. Schwartz, see theWorldValues
Survey
 (The alternative is a realist approach,
capabilities school and Bourdieuvian ‘domains’
with habitus and doxa in each domain,
creating tensions – here we need to test
for class-based or ethnic-based differences
of the measurement model parameters (group
test)
 2) eclectic approaches which allow for
agency ie freedom of choice and action
6 Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context

7. LACKS SOCIAL
DIFFERENTIA-
TION BY CLASS,
GENDER
By contrast, other authors in
the ‘gender & development’
school stress gender & inter-
class differentiation, contrasts,
and inequality. Example:
SUNDARAM,A. &VANNEMAN,
R. 2008. Gender differentials in
literacy in India:The intriguing
relationship with women's labor
force participation. World
Development, 36, 128-143.
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
7

8. Intriguing…
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
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8
CONSERVATIVE
VALUES
Poor India low on
“consistency”
SELF-
ENHANCEMENT
VALUES

9. 9
Low Differentials of Attitude by Age in TheseTwo Countries (Small Sample Size)
A single regression was used here.The dependent variable from WorldValues Survey was how
strongly do you agree with the statement that “Housewifery is as fulfilling as working for pay’.
+ Country dummy and country interaction effects for age, education and being single. The graph
shows the net impact of direct and indirect associations.
Source: WorldValues Survey Bdesh 2002 and India 2006 Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
0123
20 40 60 80 100 20 40 60 80 100
Bangladesh India
HousewiferyisnotasFulfillingas
WorkforPay
age
Graphs by country
More tendency to
criticise the role of
housewife.

10. Comparing Bangladesh / India
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
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10
Bangladesh 2007
Source: Report on the
Demographic and Health
Survey, Bangladesh,
2007.

11. Comparing / India
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
11
India NFHS 2005-6 (All women adults – not only married women)
ange
n
on-
nt

12. Attitudes about the justifiability of beating
the wife – Bangladesh, married women only
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
12
Source: Report on the
Demographic and Health
Survey, Bangladesh,
2007.
PERCENT OF WOMEN
SAID YES
Freq Percent
Beating a wife can be justified
if…
… Wife goes out without telling the
husband 6105.4 20%
… Wife neglects
children 5189.59 17%
… Wife argues with
husband 7326.48 24%
… Wife refuses to have sex with husband 3357.97 11%

13. Attitudes about the justifiability of beating
the wife – India – there is more acceptance
of the justifiability of wife-beating in India
overall than in the Bangladesh sample
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
13
Source: women age 16-49 in the
National Family and Health Survey
of India, 2005-6

14. Comparing Germany?
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
14
UseWorldValues Survey
 IBER, P., HUPFELD, J. & MEIER, L. L. 2008. PersonalValues
and Relational Models. European Journal of
Personality, 22, 609-628. – German data.
 BOER, D. & FISCHER, R. 2013. How andWhen Do
PersonalValues Guide Our Attitudes and Sociality?
Explaining Cross-CulturalVariability in Attitude-Value
Linkages.Psychological Bulletin, 139, 1113-1147.
 This is nationalistic in orientation and universalistic in its ontology.

15. The sociological
approach
 Norms, roles, attitudes, beliefs, desires
 Agent orientations: Agents have strategies.
 It is usual to notice that beliefs and desires
are influenced by one’s personal experience
 Sociologists and economists assume / assert
that norms are cultural and historically
developed, creating a dominant, sub-dominant
and deviant group norms
 Norms are not strict rules, but bulkheads
to notice.
 Agents have strategies…
15 Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context

16. General
approaches to
measuring
attitudes
 Norms, roles, attitudes, beliefs, desires
 From a Realist Heterodox School ofThought
 We notice indiv.Variation
 We measure social norms
 We expect to see tension and deviations/deviance
 We use qual+quant
16 Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context

17. 2. specific issues of
gender roles
Occupational rigidity and
gender stereotyping create
labour-market
rigidities…e.g. poor women
do farming and livestock
work but not ‘jobs’
Inside the home there are
also gender issues about
the right to equal safety and
equal voice
 A. If labour market is flexible, then adjust
the practices to suit the agent’s strategy.
 B. If labour market is inflexible, then no
adjustment. Sex-stereotyping is a form of
inflexibility of the labour market.
 Testing this with seasonal change in
our new rural survey in 3 areas of N.
India and rural areas of B’desh
 Which women are the exceptions?
17 Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context

18. Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
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18
India
Percent Who Disagree
Bangladesh
Percent Who Disagree
PUBLIC SPHERE
When jobs are scarce:
Men should have more
right to a job than women
C001 (disagree = 1, agree
or other=0)
PRIVATE SPHERE
Child needs a home with
a father and a mother
D018 (disagree=1, agree
or other =0)
1990 46%
1995 40%
2001 36%
2006 20%
1990 3%
1995 15%
2001 5%
2006 10%
1996 23%
2002 17%
1996 2%
2002 1%
Table 1: Percentage Disagreeing with Traditional Patriarchal Values
Source: World Values Survey, various dates.

19. In CFA, the Likert scale is
taken as a linear measure.
Each variable gets a single
parameter.
In MPLUS, the Likert scale
components each get a
separate threshold. This is
more flexible.
Either way, the ‘justifiability
of wife-beating’ variables do
not fit with the ‘attitude to
decision making’ variables.
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
19
 FourVariables Used in a Factor Analysis for
Bangladesh DHS 2007
 …to estimate the social norm that women and
men can equally participate in the economy. This
variable has four components.
 Who Has:
 The final say on own health care
 The final say on making large household
purchases
 The final say on making household
purchases for daily needs
 The final say on visits to family or relatives
 If respondent (wife) then the indicator takes the value 3.
(19% in 2007 for the last item shown above)
 If respondent and husband decide together, it takes value
2 (42%)
 If respondent and another person (which is rare), it takes
value 1. (7%)
 If any other decision maker, e.g. husband alone (27% in
2007), or someone else (rare), it takes value 0.

20. A policy issue
Low productivity is a
concern
Waste?
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
20
 Our project explores the ‘wide’ definition
of labour-market participation, which
includes farming and informal sector
work,
 Vs. the narrow definition focused upon
employment = SALARIED + CASUAL.
 Joining in the ‘narrow’ part of the market
is a progressive step for a woman, and
involves more human capital and
productivity;
 Also more modernity, as it is a role which
Western women take up, and Service sector
women take up.
 Vs. cottage industries where women are hidden
indoors, which is in the WIDE but not
NARROW labour market.

21. 3.Attitudes And
Employment
 SEM approach
 Equation 1: Woman’s Labour Supply as a
Probit or Logit Outcome.
 Equation 2: The Confirmatory Factor
Analysis.
 The factor for traditional vs. egalitarian
(modern) norms existing at social level
about women’s appropriate roles goes into
Eq. 1.
 DHS variables
 Bangladesh 2007 [and 2011]
 India NFHS 2005/6 [later, we get 2011 in 2014]
21 Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context

22. Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
22
 WVS shows no clear trend over time. But clear countrywise aggregate
differences.
Components which are
binary at origin and/or
when recoded here
India Bangladesh
Jobs scarce: Men should
have more right to a job
than women (disagree = 1,
agree or other=0)
Child needs a home with a
father and a mother D018
(disagree=1)*
Marriage is an out-dated institution
D022 (agree or it depends = 1, vs.
disagree=0; binary indicator)*
1990 46%
1995 40%
2001 36%
2006 20%
1990 3% **
1995 15%
2001 5%
2006 10%
1990 4%
1995 23%
2001 18%
2006 17%
1996 23%
2002 17%
1996 2%
2002 1%
1996 12%
2002 5%

23. Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
23
 Regression results Using B’Desh
DHS 2007
 Model 1:
 Dep var = Logit of work status.
 Indep vars = age, age2, educ, rural/urban
 Model 2: adds the attitude factor as an
indep variable
 GOFTests of whole model
 Nested model test
 Model 3: tests for group difference
between countries. (To follow)
 Model 4: tests for group difference within
countries. (To follow)

24. D
I
S
C
E
R
N
M
E
N
T ! Model
should fit the reality.
Two types of LFP.
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
24
 Who Has:
 The final say on own health care
 The final say on making large purchases
 The final say on making household purchases
 The final say on visits to family
 DepVars Labour Force Participation Logits
 Wide participation – stating that they worked at all –
Having any occupation. 33%.
 Narrow participation, construed here (due to constraints
in the data) as Formal-sector labour market
participation; here, formal-sector occupational groups--
In total this group comprised 5.5% of women in 2007. It
is a rare event.
 Informal-sector labour market participation.
 This is how about 28% of the Bangladesh women work.

25. Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
25
 Table 1: Descriptives, Bangladesh
Women, DHS 2007

 DEPVARS
 workerwide 33% of wives
 workerhigh 7% of wives
 workerinformal 28% of wives

26. Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
26
 Table 1: Descriptives, BangladeshWomen, DHS 2007

 mean s.d. Lowest highest
 INDEPVARS
 Age 35 yrs 8.601504 15 49
 Wealth index -6613 94185.19 -110680 382304
 hindu .08 .2727044 0 1
 rural .65 .4758562 0 1
 widow .06 .2303986 0 1
 edyears 3.21 3.949377 0 16

 ATTITUDEVARS
 egalatt 0 .69 -1.13 1.16
 beatatt 0 .26 -.68 .15
 There are 30,527 cases in the data.

27. Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
27
Table 1: Logit regression of women only, Bangladesh 2007
Key: egalatt = egalitarian attitudes to decision making about spending in/by the
household
workerwide = all forms of remunerated work in the labour market (1=yes, 0=no)

28. Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
28
Table 2: Logit regression of women only, SalariedWork, Bangladesh 2007
Key: egalatt = egalitarian attitudes to decision making about spending
Workerhigh = the salaried and service-sector work in the labour market (1=yes, 0=no)

29. Informal
sector=Distress
labouring.
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
29
 Table 3: The informal sector labour
supply equation has an inverse
education “effect”

30. Findings (1b):
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
30
LFP=labour force
participation
How good is the
fit?
What is the
education effect on
LFP?
How strong is the
association of LFP
with attitudes?
Does education
interact with
attitudes?
WIDE LFP Pseudo 4%
*no wealth effect
Small Direct association of
Egalitarian Attitudes with
LFP is large
“No interaction
effect.” – a
misunderstandin
g,
epiphenomenal
evidence.
FORMAL LFP Pseudo 8%
*no wealth effect
Positive Directly small; It reinforces the
apparent impact
of education &vv
INFORMAL LFP Pseudo 10%
It is a poverty effect:
woman joining in the
labour market more in
desperation.
Negative Directly large; It reverses the
negative
association of
education with
LFPBased on DHS Bangladesh 2007

31. Hypotheses of New Project
The declining labour participation rate of Indian women is not explicable by rising
modern, or egalitarian, attitudes, nor by education. LFP rising/ falling in rural areas?
It could only be explained by another driver, likely to be either household wealth or
the partner’s earnings. Another possibility is caring for the ill husband.31

From N. Indrani Mazumdar, EPW 2011, XLVI 43: page 119.

32. Findings (1) Bangladesh 2007
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
32
 In Bangladesh, two distinct factors exist – one for attitudes
thought to be general about wife-beating; and one about how
equal men’s and women’s roles in decision making are.
 As factors they each fit well.
 Their cross-correlation is very low.
 Egalitarian decision making about spending is, in turn,
positively correlated 0.12 *** with egalitarian attitudes about
women’s roles. We use only one of these.
 Egalitarian personal attitudes are associated with a higher
likelihood of working, and/or those in the labour force (in DHS
terms) have more egalitarian personal attitudes. Same for
attitudes about wife-beating. The explanatory power added is
about 2% on 8% in DHS.

33. Findings (2) Comparative
Gender Norms and Labour Supply in
Comparative Context
33
 In Bangladesh, overall female participation in the labour market is,
according to the WVS, lower than India on comparable measures.
 In both countries, the egalitarian attitude to housewifery is
associated with working informally, but is neither determining
nor particularly strongly co-associated with work for those working
fulltime.
 WVS shows that in both Bangladesh and India, age (an inverted U
curve) and education are the main factors associated with working
fulltime. Those with more education are more likely to be
PARTICIPATING.
 Explanatory power when ‘attitudes’ or social norms about gender is
the dependent variable is low in both Bangladesh and India in the
WVS, with r-squared of 5% or less, and low or no correlation among
attitude measures!