Men who view women traditionally earn more than those who don't

Washington, Sept 22 : Men who believe in traditional roles for women earn more money than those who don't, says a new survey.

The study, led by Dr. Timothy Judge and Beth Livingston, from the University of Florida, has also found that women with more egalitarian views do not make much more than their traditional counterparts.

During the study, the researchers examined data from a nationally representative study of men and women who were interviewed four times between 1979 and 2005.

In the beginning, a total of 12,686 people, aged 14 to 22, participated in the study, and there was a 60 percent retention rate over the course of the study.

In all the four interviews, the subjects were questioned about their views on gender roles in the work force and at home.

The questions varied from whether they believed a woman's place is in the home, whether employing wives leads to more juvenile delinquency, if a man should be the achiever outside the home, and if the woman should take care of the home and family.

Participants were also asked about their earnings, religious upbringing, education, whether they worked outside the home and their marital status, among other topics.

The researchers focussed their study on gender role views as a predictor of a person's earnings. They controlled for job complexity, number of hours worked and education.

Their analyses showed that men in the study who said they had more traditional gender role attitudes made an average of about 8,500 dollars more annually than those who had less traditional attitudes.

"More traditional people may be seeking to preserve the historical separation of work and domestic roles. Our results prove that is, in fact, the case. This is happening even in today's work force where men and women are supposedly equal as far as participation," said Judge.

But, in case of women, the situation was completely different. Women who held more traditional views about gender roles made an average of 1,500 dollars less annually than the women with more egalitarian views. In other words, if a married couple holds traditional gender role attitudes, the husband's earning advantage was predicted to be eight times greater than a married couple where the husband and wife have more egalitarian attitudes.

"These results show that changes in gender role attitudes have substantial effects on pay equity. When workers' attitudes become more traditional, women's earnings relative to men suffer greatly. When attitudes become more egalitarian, the pay gap nearly disappears," said Judge.

However, the researchers claim that the gender pay gap is not just an economic phenomenon.

"Psychology has an important role to play, too. Our country's policies have been leaning toward gender equality for decades now. But, according to our study, traditional gender role views continue to work against this goal," said Judge.

The results of the study were published in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

ANI