Educational expansion and declining religiosity in Italy: a pathway to support for gender egalitarianism among men and women?

Abstract

In the last decades, cultural norms connected to the role of women in society have been changing in many countries. Support for gender egalitarianism has been on the rise throughout the Western world in countries such as the US (Cotter et al., 2011), Australia (van Egmond et al., 2010), Italy (Lomazzi, 2017) and it has been reported also from cross-national studies (Inglehart, Norris, 2003; Seguino, 2007). Is this observed shift in values due to changes in the composition of the population, or due to changes in individuals’ opinions due to change-inducing factors? Previous research that has compared levels of support for gender egalitarianism over time and across different birth cohorts (Brewster, Padavic, 2000; Cotter et al., 2011) has found mostly period effects, “but the impetus for change continues to be unclear” (Davis, Greenstein, 2009, 91). Over the past three decades, the average Italian has become more likely to endorse gender egalitarianism (Lomazzi, 2017). The shift from norms emphasizing traditional gender roles to norms supporting gender equality is often explained by structural and cultural developments such as rising levels of educational attainment and declining religiosity (Inglehart, 1997). However, these theoretical expectations are seldom tested empirically. Since the 1950s Italian education expanded rapidly. While in the 1940s the number of enrolled students in Italian universities has been below 0.5 million, it has become about 2 million in the 1990s (Triventi, Trivellato, 2009). Religiosity, on the other hand, is declining in Italy, as documented by Pisati (2000) and more recently by Vezzoni et al. (2015) showing that attendance at Mass in Italy has decreased since the 1960s, despite a period of stability in the 1980s. This article contributes to the literature by empirically investigating the question of to what extent the processes of educational expansion in terms of university graduates and declining religiosity have affected views on the societal roles of men and women in Italy. The analysis also sheds light on the extent to which these processes have differential effects among men and women. This is not to say that education and religiosity are the only factors affecting attitudes to gender egalitarianism and I do not deny the role of other factors such as,