A Study On Gender Role Attitude And Its Influencing Factors Of Residents In China

From the beginning of the 1990s, the mass media has entered a golden period of rapid development, the types and quantities of media have increased dramatically. Since entering the 21th Century, Chinese TV media has ushered in an important period of development. According to the statistics of 2011, the national television coverage rate is up to 97.82%. At the same time, as a growing popularity of the mass media, the Internet has gradually penetrated into every corner of the family. By the end of December 2015, the size of the Internet users of our nation has reached six hundred and eighty-eight million. The Internet penetration rate is 50.3%. The development of technology and innovation has constantly enriched the traditional media forms, but also had a huge impact on the existing way of life. In the field of media and gender research, the versions of whether the contact of the mass media has influence on the formation of the gender role attitude are different. It’s unclear whether the emergence of the mass media imperceptibly changes the traditional gender order, and whether the close contact with the mass media causes impact to their social gender role attitudes.This is the problem that will be discussed in this article.The data of this paper comes from CGSS (2012), a Chinese comprehensive social survey released by Renmin University of China, which is a general survey including urban residents and rural residents. The measurement about the gender role attitude in this questionnaire is formulated by Renmin University of China, mainly including five dimensions:family and career, ability, self realization, employment equality, division of family labor and so on.The method of factor analysis was used to analyze the variable of gender role attitude. In the research of the related factors affecting the gender role attitude, this article is mainly from three angles:the personal factors, the family factors, and the factors of mass media contact. Besides, the three most widely used media-"newspaper", "TV" and "network" has been chosen.It is found that gender is the most basic factor that affects the gender role attitude. Women hold a more modern and equal gender role attitude in society than men. Age, education level, household registration and political status have an impact on the gender role attitude. The marital status and the individual’s total income have an influence on the female’s gender role attitude, while there is no significant effect on male’s. Family factors have different influence on the formation of gender role attitudes in male and female. For men, son, father’s education level, father’s work will affect theirs; for women, mother’s years of education, and father’s political status will affect theirs. In terms of media exposure, different contact frequency of Newspaper affect not only male’s but also female’s gender role attitudes, and relatively speaking, a greater impact on female’s; different contact frequency of TV has no effect; different contact frequency of network has positive effects on female’s gender role attitude,but not on male’s.On the whole, the media contact, even has on significant positive significance in shaping modern gender role attitude, but also did not make it return to the traditional trend.