Does advancing women’s empowerment lead to perceptions of threat? Research on who is threatened by women’s empowerment, under what conditions and why

The main guiding research question of this project is: what generates, fosters or reduces perceptions of advancement in women’s empowerment as threatening in Western democracies?

Conventional wisdom suggests that older generations are more inclined to oppose societal changes that advance gender equality, yet in our recent publication, we find that young men are most likely to perceive advances in women’s rights as threatening across Europe.

Building on this study, the project aims to, one, identify which demographic groups are most likely to perceive advancements in women’s empowerment as threatening over time, and two, what motivates such threat perceptions.

Moreover, we aim to explain what role intervening factors – such as competition, issue framing, elite cues and social media – can play in mitigating perceived threats.

Novel survey data from the upcoming rounds of the European Social Survey and the European Quality of Government (EQI) Survey and data freely available over time from other existing surveys will be analyzed.

We will also design and field a pan-European randomized survey experiment in the next EQI round, testing various threat perceptions.

The project will also conduct qualitative interviews in areas in Europe with selected groups that are most likely to perceive women’s empowerment as a threat, specified from the findings of the large-N empirical studies to provide more nuance and depth to the overall findings and eventually policy recommendations