Sexism Attitude Regarding Gender Roles

This section presents the results of some analyses which have been conducted. One of the analysis is mediation analysis, which shows that the more people hold sexism attitude regarding gender roles, the more they endorse motherhood myths, which in turn enhances the opposition to women’s career after the birth of a child.

The survey conducted in participant countries shows that these countries are stating motherhood myths as a mediator of the sexism-opposition to women’s career relationship, rather than sexism as a mediator of the myths-opposition to women’s career relationship. Finally, this result suggests that endorsement of motherhood myths is not a mere consequence of discrimination. Taken together, analyses conducted on the whole sample, as well as on each country separately, support main assumption that endorsement of motherhood myths is a significant mediator of the relationship between sexism and opposition to women’s career.

Moderated mediation analyses

Indirect effect through survey waves-The moderated mediation model was estimated using a multiple group approach. The difference between the indirect effect in 2012 and 1994 is not significant. The indirect effect is not moderated by the survey year, except in Great Britain where the indirect effect, although still significant, decreased between 1994 and 2012, and Bulgaria, Poland, and Russia where the indirect effect slightly increased between 1994 and 2012. Results confirm that the indirect effect of sexism on opposition to women’s career through motherhood myths is not moderated by the respondents’ gender in 15 out of the 16 countries. The only exception is Poland. In this country, the indirect effect is stronger for the female than for the male respondents.

Hierarchical regression analysis

A hierarchical regression analyses was conducted in order to establish the respective contributions of demographical variables, motherhood myths and sexism to objection of working women. Firstly, participant’s gender and partnership were analyzed together with standardized scores of age, years of schooling, subjective social status, presence of religious services and political orientations. Step two included sexism, the myths about the aversive consequence of mother’s work for her child and for family. Predictors in first survey accounted for 9% of the variance. The analysis revealed the significant effects of participant’s gender, years of schooling age and political orientation. Partnership was not related to opposition to women’s work held together the results democrat that the higher the time of education and the subjective social status, the lower the opposition to women’s work. Contrarily, the higher the age, political conservatism and the religiosity, the higher the opposition to women’s work.

Finally, results show that opposition to women’s work is more pronounced amongst men than amongst women., sexism and motherhood myths are accounted for an additional 18% of the variance, indicating that these variables significantly improved the model’s ability to predict opposition to women’s work, over and above the contributions of gender, partnership, education, social status, religiosity and political orientation. Specifically, the analysis revealed the significant effects of sexism, myth about the aversive consequence of mother’s work for her child and myth about the aversive consequence of women’s work for family. It should be also considered that the effect of participant’s gender virtually disappeared after controlling for sexism and motherhood myths.

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