The Impact Of Internet Use On Gender Role Attitudes And Gender Inequality In The Labour Market

Gender inequality in labour market is an important social and economic problem in many countries in the world.Academics generally conduct research from two aspects:employment and wage income,and find that traditional notion of gender role is one of the important reasons of gender inequality in employment and wage income.In China,gender inequality also exists in employment opportunities and wages.In terms of employment opportunities,compared with Chinese men,female workers in China still have few employment opportunities,low salary,low job stability,strong substitutability and little space for development,and lack of opportunities and channels for upward development.In terms of wage income,there is a relatively serious phenomenon of unequal pay for the same work in China’s labor market,and the gender wage gap continues to widen.However,with the development of new technological revolution,the development and use of the Internet has brought new possibilities for improving the plight of gender inequality in the labor market.Internet use may affect labor market employment and wage inequality through gender perception.Although domestic and foreign academic circles have begun to pay attention to the impact of Internet use on the labor market and have obtained abundant research results,however,there is relatively little research on the systematic analysis of the relationship between Internet use and labor market from a multidisciplinary perspective.This paper analyzes this issue from a multidisciplinary perspective and discusses the relevant mechanism.Based on existing theories and relevant literature,first this paper analyzes the impact of Internet use on gender role attitudes by using CGSS data from 2010 to 2018,and then analyzes the impact of Internet use on gender employment inequality and wage income inequality in the labor market.The impact of Internet use on gender employment inequality is mainly analyzed from two aspects:Internet use on gender employment opportunities and occupational gender segregation.As for the impact of Internet use on wage inequality,this paper mainly analyzes the impact of Internet use on gender wage gap.Because of the existence of causal disorder and other problems,this paper,on the basis of the least square regression(OLS),uses the propensity score matching(PSM)method,instrumental variable(Ⅳ)method and other methods to overcome the endogeneity problem.Because there may be sample selection bias when analyzing the impact of Internet use on wage income,this paper uses Heckman selection model to correct the sample selection bias,and on this basis,adopts Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method based on quantile regression,and mainly draws the following conclusions:First,Internet use can modernize the gender role attitudes of both men and women,and has a greater impact on women.There is heterogeneity in the influence of Internet use on gender perception of different characteristics of males and females.For both rural and urban male and female,unmarried and married men and women,men and women over 35 and under 35,men and women with more than nine years of compulsory education or less,and men and women in the eastern,central and western regions,the effect of Internet use on promoting more modern and egalitarian gender role attitudes among women is even greater.Second,Internet use can improve the current situation of gender inequality in employment opportunities in the labor market.The results showed that Internet use can increase the probability of non-agricultural employment for individuals of different genders.Compared with men,Internet use has a greater effect on the probability of non-agricultural employment for women.At the same time,it is found that Internet use affects the employment opportunity inequality of male and female through the mechanism of gender role attitudes,and the employment opportunity effect of different characteristic groups is heterogeneous.Internet use can improve the gender employment opportunity inequality of people over 35 years old,urban household registration,and people with junior high school education or above.Thirdly,Internet use can reduce the level of occupational gender horizontal segregation,but increase the level of occupational gender vertical segregation.Therefore,Internet use can alleviate occupational gender segregation only to a certain extent.Internet use can reduce occupational gender segregation by promoting more equal and modern attitudes to gender roles.Internet use has a greater effect on reducing the level of occupational gender horizontal segregation of individuals over 35 years old,rural areas,married,and those with junior high school degree or above in eastern China.It will increase the level of occupational gender vertical segregation of individuals over 35 years old,married,rural and urban,lower than secondary school in the eastern region.Fourth,Internet use can significantly improve the individual’s hourly wage level,and has a greater effect on increasing the individual’s wage income of the low and middle income groups,and has a greater effect on increasing the wage income of the low income group of women than men.Internet use helps individuals to hold equal and modern notions of gender roles,which in turn increases individuals’ hourly earnings.In addition,Internet use widens the mean of the gender wage gap;however,according to the results of quantile decomposition,Internet use can narrow the gender wage gap among low-income individuals,and widen the gender wage gap between middle-and high-income individuals.Based on the effect of Internet use on alleviating gender inequality in the labor market,the government should comprehensively popularize Internet use,not only create conditions for individuals to access the Internet,but also provide targeted Internet skills training for workers.Individual workers should not only raise their awareness of using the Internet,but also strive to master the skills of using the Internet and make full use of the technological dividend brought by the development of the Internet.This paper systematically analyzes the impact of Internet use on gender inequality in the labor market from a multidisciplinary research perspective.However,due to the availability of data,the mining of Internet usage needs to be further deepened and detailed.