Attitudes to Gender Inequality in South Africa: Evidence from Implicit and Explicit Attitudes

Carolyn Chisadza (), Matthew Clance, Nicky Nicholls (), Eleni Yitbarek () and Tendai Zawaira ()
Additional contact information
Carolyn Chisadza: Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Hatfield 0028, South Africa
Nicky Nicholls: Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Hatfield 0028, South Africa
Eleni Yitbarek: Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Hatfield 0028, South Africa
Tendai Zawaira: Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Hatfield 0028, South Africa

No 202514, Working Papers from University of Pretoria, Department of Economics

Abstract: We use the Harvard Gender-Career Implicit Association Test (IAT)) and a selfreport questionnaire on 402 respondents in South Africa to explore the factors that contribute to implicit and explicit gender attitudes, moreso the discrepancy between implicit and explicit attitudes. Our initial findings indicate that implicit gender attitudes do not necessarily correlate with explicit gender attitudes in the sample, confirming the implicit-explicit discrepancy (IED) theory. On further investigation, we observe that women appear to hold implicit traditional gender role ideology compared to men, even though women are more likely than men to explicitly self-report for gender equality. We also find that some parental factors, such as being raised by a mother only, are associated with the IED. Overall, these results suggest that in order to effectively tackle gender inequality, a wider policy approach is required, one that can address some of these factors that contribute to gender unequal outcomes.

Keywords: implicit-explicit discrepancy (IED); gender attitudes; gender inequality; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2025-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/61/WP/wp_2025_14.zp263981.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pre:wpaper:202514

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Pretoria, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Rangan Gupta ().