Demographic processes constrain global growth in gender egalitarianism

Abstract Women's and men's equal participation in work, education, and politics rests upon widespread public support for gender equality. While notable increases in support for gender equality over the past decades have been celebrated, existing evidence is limited by a predominant focus on Western societies. Utilizing data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study covering 78 countries that represent 86% of the global population, we examine how population-level support for gender equality in the public sphere changed between 1995 and 2022, both globally and across different cultural and socioeconomic contexts. Our results indicate that, although public support for gender equality increased in most countries, it stagnated in the global population as a whole. Moreover, there has been a pronounced and increasing divergence across countries, particularly between Western and non-Western societies. We attribute part of the stagnation in global public support for gender equality to demographically induced compositional effects. Namely, we find that (i) changes in the national composition of the global population have constrained increases in global public support for gender equality; (ii) fertility is higher in countries where average support for gender equality is lower; and (iii) fertility is higher and occurs earlier among women with less egalitarian views. Given that parents typically transmit their gender-related views to their children, higher and earlier fertility among persons with less egalitarian views has likely constrained global growth in gender egalitarianism. We call for a closer examination of how demographic processes influence global trends in gender egalitarianism.