Gender Ideology, Household Behavior, and Backlash in Urban China

This article analyzes gender attitudes and behaviors of husbands and wives across three urban Chinese cohorts. Whilewomen remain egalitarian in gender ideology across cohorts, the percentage of men who hold egalitarian gender attitudes declines significantly across cohorts. At the same time, the division of household labor has become somewhat less inequitable for women; however, their expectations of equality appear to have changed faster than the division of labor. Men's attitudes reflect a backlash to egalitarian pressures from their wives and the state, with significantly negative implications for their partner's marriage quality.