Social Cohesiveness and gender Role Attitudes

The main aims of the present paper are to examine whether gender role attitudes mitigate or facilitate social cohesiveness of Luxembourg residents and to uncover whether this effect is moderated by gender. Social cohesiveness is measured by composite indicators: first two represent general dimensions of social cohesiveness (behavioural and attitudinal) and the remaining five stand for specific domains of the concept (institutional trust, solidarity, socio-cultural participation, political participation and social relations). Attitudes toward gender are operationalized into three indicators: childcare, homemaking and economic relations. The outcomes of the analysis reveal that traditional attitudes, mainly those regarding homemaking, have a mixed impact on social cohesiveness. On the one hand, being more traditional increases attitudinal level of cohesiveness, i.e. institutional trust and solidarity. On the other hand, it seems to negatively affect cohesiveness at behaviour level, concretely in the intensity of socio-cultural relations and political participation. Gender appears to moderate the effect of gender role attitudes on political participation and solidarity, implying that traditional attitudes decrease the level of these type of cohesiveness more among women than among men.