Societal foundations for explaining fertility: Gender equity

By P. McDonald. 2013

144 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background: Gender equity theory in relation to fertility argues that very low fertility is the result of incoherence in the levels of gender equity in individually-oriented social institutions and family-oriented social institutions. The salience of gender to the fertility transition is strong in theory but not as strong in specification of testable hypotheses as has been pointed out in the literature. Objective: The paper aims to clarify the specification of gender equity theory through a discussion of the difference between equity and equality and to suggest methods that might be applied to test the theory. Methods: The theory is restated and further developed using literature from different disciplines. The method is described using a decomposition of fertility for women by human capital levels. Results: The clarification of the theory includes a reminder that the theory relates to differences in fertility between countries and not to differences in fertility between women in the same country. In comparisons between countries, higher gender equity leads to higher fertility. In comparisons of fertility across women in the same country, higher gender equity does not necessarily imply higher fertility. In relation to measurement, a specification is suggested that effectively compares women across countries controlling for their level of human capital. Simple graphics are used to indicate ways in which fertility between countries may vary. Conclusions: The paper concludes that it is likely the gender equity theory can be tested more readily by examining the behaviour across countries of women with higher levels of human capital.

Subfields: Demography, Gender Studies

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a5a30f8d8c31fbee37ae1e0f0a87cc8fa7645fb8

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Citations in the corpus

Gender‐Role Ideology, Labor Market Institutions, and Post‐industrial Fertility (2016, background): “This emphasis signals that it is neither gender inequity (the absence of perceived fairness in gender relations; McDonald 2013) nor gender inequality per se that explains the persistence of very low fertility in some post-industrial countries; rather, it is gender essentialism.”
Marriage and Family in East Asia: Continuity and Change (2015, background): “Our theoretical framework for understanding patterns of change and stability in East Asian families draws upon the work of McDonald (2000, 2009, 2013), whose gender equity theory of fertility change emphasizes tension between growing opportunities for women outside the family and limited change in…”
How Do Changes in Gender Role Attitudes Towards Female Employment Influence Fertility? A Macro-Level Analysis (2015, background): “It is, secondly, at this point that serious reconciliation policies, so much stressed by McDonald (2006, 2013), are likely to emerge.”
The Best Is Yet to Come? Attitudes Toward Gender Roles Among Adolescents in 36 Countries (2017, background): “Moreover, it is a fundamental element in fertility control in less developed countries and a driving force for it in more developed ones (McDonald 2013).”