Towards Gender Equality: a Comparative Analysis of Gender Attitudes in Africa

ABSTRACT Gender attitudes and its factors continue to be debated in an era where gender equality remains a priority to countries in the world. Modernization theorists have assumed a predictable positive pattern of the influence of economic development on gender attitudes, thereby arguing that higher levels of economic development such as GDP per Capita, increases support for gender equality across countries. Whereas this has been proven in European and Western countries, it is difficult to generalize the results to African countries as the phenomenon is understudied on the continent. Furthermore, some individual level factors that are likely to influence attitudes towards equality in Africa have not been explored. Using data from the 5th round of the Afrobarometer survey and multi-level analysis, this study sought to address the question: what socio-cultural factors influence gender attitudes towards equality, and how does this differ across African countries? The study also investigated the influence of economic development, in addition to the socio-cultural factors, on attitudes towards gender equality in 34 African countries. In addition to the quantitative methods, the study adopted qualitative methods - semi-structured interviews - to examine how people understand gender equality and to help explain people’s attitudes towards gender equality and the factors that influence them. The study revealed that 1) Among countries in Africa, economic development, in this case GDP per Capita, does not significantly influence gender attitudes towards equality; 2) There are no significant variations among African countries regarding the effect of people’s ethnic background on their attitudes towards gender equality; 3) Gender attitudes are strongly influenced by education, employment status and religious denomination; and 4) Peoples’ attitudes are not changing much as there are no significant differences between younger and older cohorts. Keywords: Africa, Gender Attitudes, Gender Equality, Economic Development, Ethnicity