The Missing Link

The World Values Survey ( WVS ) shows that, on average, individual Canadians, like Australians, Britons, and Americans, express few macro and meso patriarchal beliefs. However, Canadians are best viewed as members of different sex-based clusters of patriarchal beliefs. The intensity of beliefs varies considerably among such groups. A survey conducted in Toronto also collected information on micro patriarchal beliefs that were not measured in the WVS . Equal numbers of Torontonians expressed high and low micro levels of belief. While patriarchy as manifested in various ways has been previously studied in Canada, this is the first systematic national study of patriarchal beliefs per se. Overall, the amount of patriarchal belief discovered warrants the inclusion of this factor in examinations of many Canadian phenomena.