How Do Female Spouses’ Political Interests Affect Male Spouses’ Views About a Women’s Issue?

Yamamura, Eiji (2009): How Do Female Spouses’ Political Interests Affect Male Spouses’ Views About a Women’s Issue?

Abstract

This paper explored how the degree of female spouses’ political interest affects male spouses’ views about women’s empowerment, using individual level data in Japan. Controlling for unobserved area-specific fixed effects, results showed that males were likely to consider women’s empowerment important if their spouses were interested in politics. This spouse effect was observed for conservative males but not for progressive-neutral males. Results were unchanged when the endogeneity bias caused by spouses’ political interests were controlled for. These findings suggest that female family members’ political interests and views play an important role in determining male views regarding women’s issues.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Spouse, political opinion, women’s empowerment
• Subjects: J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J12 - Marriage ; Marital Dissolution ; Family Structure ; Domestic Abuse; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D72 - Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D83 - Search ; Learning ; Information and Knowledge ; Communication ; Belief ; Unawareness; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J16 - Economics of Gender ; Non-labor Discrimination

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