The Effect Of Democratization And Support For Democracy On Gender Attitudes In 19 European Societies

Attitudes about gender-specific roles of women and men have changed in all European societies and in North America during the last decades. The present chapter focuses on the role of democratization as a driving force behind changes in support for gender equality, analysing the case of the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It employs multilevel regression analyses in order to better capture the effect of individuals attitudes towards democracy, as well as the impact of societal democratization on gender attitudes. In the first section the chapter provides a short overview of the existing literature. The second part introduces the indicators and the strategy used for analysis, while the third comprises the data analysis. The final section is dedicated to the conclusions and to a short discussion. Keywords: democratization; European societies; gender attitudes