The Emergence and Persistence of Gender Ambivalence: A Latent Class Analysis from 1977 - 2014

The gender revolution aims to achieve gender equality in both the public and private spheres. Yet, empirical studies show that, despite enjoying progress in both spheres, women’s advancements tend to be concentrated in the public sphere, while progress in the private sphere lags. I argue that underneath this lopsided gender progress between both spheres, is the uneven development in gender attitudes, embodied by a proportion of Americans who are gender ambivalents – that is they support gender equality in the public sphere but not in the private sphere. This article addresses two research questions: (a) how persistent are gender ambivalents; (b) how different are they from other subgroups? I used the General Social Survey (1977-2014) to conduct latent class analysis and multinomial logit latent class regression on four gender attitudes. Results showed that beginning from 1989 and persisting until 2014, more than 25% of Americans are gender ambivalents, constituting the second largest latent class after egalitarians who support gender equality in both spheres. Also, gender ambivalents tend to be pre-Baby-boomer men who have less than a high school education and are outside the workforce. I discuss the implications of my results for the current state and future of the gender revolution.