Background

With China's ambitious plan to eradicate absolute poverty in rural areas by 2020 and to create a harmonious society, tackling root causes of inequality is likely to become a major subject on the Chinese political agenda.

While China performs relatively well in terms of a broad set of gender equality indicators (WDI 2018; UN 2018), gender-biased perceptions and discrimination persist (Human Rights Watch 2018; Booth et al. 2018).

Gender stereotypes are deep rooted social beliefs and exist across the globe. While extensive research exists on this topic in developed countries (e.g. Bian et al. 2017, 2018; or Eccles et al. 1993), evidence in the development economics literature is relatively scarce.

Project overview

This project collects quantitative data of households and their members on gender biased beliefs and socio-economic characteristics in Southwest China.

The central aim of this study is to analyse how beliefs and perceptions of individuals differ across families and ethnic groups; how they are transmitted within families and their effect on behaviour.

Research team

Principal investigator

• Jennifer Golan (University of Bath)

Co-investigators

• Jing You (Renmin University of China)