Gender and highbrow cultural participation in Europe: The effect of societal gender equality and development

Abstract

Existing individual-level research links women’s higher participation in high-status cultural activities to their position in work and family spheres. This article studies how cross-national variation in women’s and men’s cultural participation relates to societal care- and work-related gender equality and development. Multilevel analyses on Eurobarometer data (2013) indicate that male engagement in the feminine domain of care and societal development stimulates frequent participation in highbrow culture, but more for men than for women, thus partly explaining gender gap variation in highbrow cultural participation across European Union countries. We conclude that men play an important but underestimated role in the explanation of the gender gap.

Keywords

Cross-national comparison division of labor gender gender equality highbrow cultural participation human development

Introduction

Research indicates that women participate more than men in highbrow cultural and artistic activities, such as reading literary books and attending operas, plays, or classical concerts (Christin, 2012). This gender gap is present in several Western countries, such as Denmark (Katz-Gerro and Jaeger, 2015), Finland (Purhonen et al., 2011), Sweden (Bihagen and Katz-Gerro, 2000), and the United States (Christin, 2012; Lizardo, 2006; Tepper, 2000), although the gap size differs cross-nationally (Falk and Katz-Gerro, 2016). Considering that highbrow cultural consumption functions as cultural capital, which is an important status marker in Western societies (Bourdieu, 1986; Lamont and Lareau, 1988), women’s higher participation is actually surprising: cultural capital appears to be one of the only status markers on which women do better than men (Christin, 2012).

Most existing studies tried to solve this ‘puzzle of women’s highbrow consumption’ (cf. Lizardo, 2006) by primarily focusing on women’s individual characteristics and on the cultural capital-enhancing properties of cultural participation. In this article, we complement current thinking in two ways. First, instead of reducing cultural consumption to its high-status character, we also highlight the feminine connotation of leisure-time artistic activities (Kraaykamp et al., 2008; Nosek et al., 2002; Zinkhan et al., 2004). Acknowledging the gender-typing of highbrow participation allows for explanations that focus on how gendered opportunities and expectations influence not only women but also, and maybe especially, men. Indeed, understanding men’s role in the gender gap may be more important to solve the puzzle than is generally recognized (Lagaert et al., 2017; Lehman and Dumais, 2017).

Second and related, we depict how the societal context affects the frequency of both men’s and women’s highbrow participation: we evaluate to what extent gender equality in the societal division of labor impacts both men’s and women’s theater attendance, museum and art gallery visits, and ballet, dance performance, and opera attendance. Division of labor refers to how work, in terms of labor market participation and segregation, and family care, in terms of the division of housework and childcare responsibilities, are organized in a country. Thus, we contextualize existing individual-level research that describes how traditional gender-role expectations in the family sphere and female labor market participation and segregation in the work sphere shape the opportunities and norms regarding women’s highbrow cultural participation (Bihagen and Katz-Gerro, 2000; Christin, 2012; Collins, 1988; Lizardo, 2006; Willekens and Lievens, 2016).

We argue that in more gender-equal countries, where women enter the masculine sphere of work and men engage in the feminine sphere of care, both men and women will more frequently participate in culture, as increased opportunities for the outsourcing of housework and childcare in these contexts will result in more available leisure time (Craig and Mullan, 2013; Nyberg, 2015). Moreover, we expect that in societies where traditional gender boundaries are crossed, less rigorous gender roles prevail (see Ridgeway, 2011). This makes it easier for men to engage in artistic activities traditionally considered as feminine and for women to refrain from doing so, thus reducing the gender gap.

We contrast the effect of gender equality on men’s and women’s highbrow participation with the potentially confounding effect of societal development, which is one of the mechanisms behind women’s improved position in modern societies (Charles and Bradley, 2009; Gerhards et al., 2009; Inglehart and Norris, 2003) and is known to stimulate appreciation of highbrow culture (Gerhards et al., 2013; Van Hek and Kraaykamp, 2013). While gender equality would explain cross-national differences in men’s and women’s cultural participation because of the gendered nature of artistic leisure activities, societal development captures the high-status, exclusive, and inequality-related aspects of leisure-time highbrow consumption. So, by recognizing that highbrow cultural activities are at the same time high-status, feminine, and require leisure time, we get a better understanding of the specific mechanisms behind the relationship between gender and cultural consumption across social contexts. Moreover, this study is the first to analyze the gender gap in highbrow consumption across Europe and, thus, contributes to the growing body of research regarding inequalities in cultural consumption from a cross-national perspective (Falk and Katz-Gerro, 2016; Fishman and Lizardo, 2013; Gerhards et al., 2013; Van Hek and Kraaykamp, 2013).

Theoretical background

Individual-level link between gender and highbrow cultural consumption

Research from various Western countries shows that women are more likely than men to participate in high-status cultural activities, such as attending an opera, ballet, or play or visiting an (art) museum (Bihagen and Katz-Gerro, 2000; Christin, 2012; Lizardo, 2006; Purhonen et al., 2011). Explanations generally focus on expectations, opportunities, and constraints related to a woman’s responsibilities in the work and family spheres.

First, some theories argue that the gender gap in highbrow cultural participation originates in women’s labor market participation. In the United States, women are less likely to work full-time, and therefore, they have more free time to participate in these leisure activities (Christin, 2012). However, not working or working part-time is associated with lower rates of female cultural participation in Belgium (Willekens and Lievens, 2016). Among Dutch couples, women’s and men’s participation is higher when the male partner works part-time (Kraaykamp et al., 2008).

Second, the gender gap in cultural consumption may also relate to labor market segregation. According to Collins (1988, 1992), the return on women’s investment in cultural capital is especially high in ‘female’ jobs and sectors, where impression management is important. Similarly, Lizardo (2006) shows that the gender gap is smaller in occupational fields where the proportion of cultural capital (relative to the proportion of economic capital) is higher. While in the United States women’s higher cultural consumption is related to their overrepresentation in the cultural and educational sectors (Christin, 2012), Bihagen and Katz-Gerro (2000) find no empirical evidence for this in Sweden.

Third, the gender gap in arts participation may have its roots in socialization in traditional gender roles within the family and the household division of labor later in life. As Willekens and Lievens (2016) state, ‘girls are socialized in gender roles that emphasize compliance with formal culture, which leads to a stronger inclination to adopt an aesthetic disposition’ (p. 53). Furthermore, many cultural activities, such as art museum visits and ballet, opera, and theater attendance, are gender-typed as feminine, especially by people with traditional gender-role attitudes (Athenstaedt et al., 2009; Zinkhan et al., 2004). Arts participation is considered appropriate for women because these activities are passive, private, non-competitive, and academic (Tepper, 2000). So, the feminine connotation of the arts fits within wider stereotypical gender-role beliefs that originate in Victorian separate spheres ideology. This gender-typing may lead to gender-specific early socialization in arts and literature within the family (Bihagen and Katz-Gerro, 2000; Christin, 2012; Katz-Gerro and Jaeger, 2015; Tepper, 2000).

Traditional gender roles in the family context also affect adult women’s arts consumption. Collins (1988) argues that women are in charge of status production within the household. So, women consume more highbrow culture because they are responsible for the family’s public image and for the cultural reproduction within the family, that is, ‘cultural housekeeping’ (Lovell, 2001: 39). Belgian and Dutch research confirms that the mother’s cultural consumption has the largest influence on the embodied cultural capital of their children (Van Eijck, 1997; Willekens and Lievens, 2014). However, women’s family care responsibilities consume time and hamper female participation in outdoor and time-inflexible activities (Bittman and Wajcman, 2000; Hook, 2010). Belgian research indicates that time constraints related to having young children have a stronger negative effect on frequency of arts participation for women than for men (Willekens and Lievens, 2016).

What becomes clear from this literature review is, first, that next to the frequently studied cultural capital-enhancing properties of highbrow participation, it is equally important to recognize the gendered nature of these activities, that is, their female connotation, and that they require leisure time (Kraaykamp et al., 2008; Lagaert et al., 2017; Lehman and Dumais, 2017; Schmutz et al., 2016). Second, research concentrates mainly on women’s characteristics and overlooks men’s role in the gender gap (Lagaert et al., 2017; Lehman and Dumais, 2017). Third, the spheres of work and family shape the norms (e.g. traditional gender-role beliefs), the structural opportunities (e.g. jobs in feminine sectors), and the constraints (e.g. leisure time) for women’s highbrow cultural participation. However, evidence of whether and how these work- and family-related mechanisms affect women’s arts consumption is inconsistent across countries. The (currently unexplained) cross-national variation in size of the gender gap in Western countries further suggests that the processes behind gender differences are context-dependent (see Falk and Katz-Gerro, 2016).

Contextualizing work and family: societal division of labor

The gendered division of labor refers to the social organization of responsibilities in which women are usually more responsible for childcare and domestic work and men are mainly in charge of tasks in the public sphere, especially the economy and politics (Chafetz, 1991; Hofäcker et al., 2013). Gender equality in the division of labor in the household and the workplace varies considerably across countries (Fuwa, 2004; Hook, 2006, 2010). This means that societies structurally organize work and family spheres differently, and these spheres are associated with divergent gender norms cross-nationally (see, for instance, Hofäcker et al., 2013; Hook, 2006, 2010; Sümer, 2009). This macro-level organization of the work and family spheres influences inequalities at the individual-level organization of work and family care (Bettio, 2017; Blumberg, 1991; Chafetz, 1991, 2001; Hofäcker et al., 2013; Mandel and Semyonov, 2006).

In other words, the way men and women combine work and family responsibilities and the amount of leisure time they have left is influenced by how a society supports parenting, household work, family care, and labor market participation. Therefore, we argue that (1) gender equality in the societal organization of work and care affects both women’s and men’s cultural consumption through its effects on the available leisure time, and (2) because of the gendered nature of arts-related activities, gender equality will affect men and women differently.

Societal division of labor and overall highbrow participation

Growing gender equality in the organization of care and work in Western welfare states in the last century has its roots in larger cultural and structural transformations of the economy, the organization of household labor, and the availability of leisure time (Gerhards et al., 2009; Haller et al., 2013; Inglehart, 1997; Inglehart and Norris, 2003; Noll, 2016; Stanfors and Goldscheider, 2017; Stockemer and Sundström, 2016). Some scholars refer to these societal transformations as the ‘modernization or development’ of societies.

Growing female labor market participation is to a large extent the result of the increasing number of (part-time) jobs in the service sector in post-industrialized economies, which attract women (Charles, 2011; Olivetti and Petrongolo, 2016; Stanfors and Goldscheider, 2017). The service-sector expansion also made the outsourcing of housework to the market cheaper (cf. cleaning and ironing services), which further facilitates female employment (Marx and Vandelannoote, 2015; Olivetti and Petrongolo, 2016). Moreover, to make the combination of work- and household-related demands easier on families, many European welfare states especially invested in parental leave policies and access to childcare facilities, allowing families to outsource more household- and care-related tasks to public services and mothers to stay at work (Bettio, 2017; Ciccia and Bleijenbergh, 2014; Sümer, 2009). As such, in modernized welfare states, gender equality in the domains of work and family is not only defined by which gender does more paid or unpaid work, but it also represents an entire transformation of the societal organization of work, the labor market, the economy, and care for the family.

This has implications for men’s and women’s leisure time (Craig and Mullan, 2013; Nyberg, 2015), which is an important predictor of participation in leisure activities (Kraaykamp et al., 2008; Willekens and Lievens, 2016). Cross-national comparative research by Craig and Mullan (2013) indicates that mothers and fathers have the most leisure time in Denmark, the most gender-equal country under study, compared to Australia, France, Italy, and the United States. The large investments in systems to outsource housework to the service sector and public sector in many European countries give (especially highly educated) families more leisure time that can be used for cultural participation¹ (Marx and Vandelannoote, 2015; Nyberg, 2015). Therefore, we expect that gender equality in the organization of work (H1a) and gender equality in the organization of care for the family (H2a) will have a positive effect on the frequency of highbrow cultural participation of both men and women.

Societal division of labor and the gender gap in highbrow participation

We expect that higher societal gender equality is associated with smaller gender gaps in cultural participation (see Blumberg, 1991; Chafetz, 1991, 2001). Explanations work through the effects of different structural opportunities and constraints for men and women and through gendered normative expectations (Hook, 2010). Labor market segregation, which partly explains women’s higher participation at the individual level (Christin, 2012; Collins, 1988, 1992; Lizardo, 2006), can function as such a structural opportunity that stimulates women’s cultural consumption. In societies where women’s responsibilities for the family can only be combined with educational sector jobs – a sector where cultural capital is important – women are more likely to participate in highbrow culture than they would in a context where there is no gendered job segregation and where women can enter any occupational sector (see Bihagen and Katz-Gerro, 2000; Christin, 2012; Lizardo, 2006).

Moreover, considering that traditional gender-role beliefs and the idea that men and women belong to separate spheres are the basis of the female gender-typing of artistic activities (Tepper, 2000; Zinkhan et al., 2004), the normative expectations regarding acceptable behavior for men and women in a society will affect their highbrow cultural consumption. When women can enter the masculine sphere of work and men the feminine domain of care for the family, this signals that crucial gender boundaries are crossed and less rigorous gender roles prevail (Ridgeway, 2011; Sümer, 2009). We expect that in societies where these gender boundaries are crossed and where traditional gender roles are losing their importance, it is more acceptable for men to engage in artistic activities traditionally considered as feminine and for women to refrain from doing so, thus reducing the gender gap (see Ridgeway, 2011). On the contrary, when in a country care for the family is considered a female responsibility and women manage most care-related and household tasks, while having limited access to the labor market, traditional expectations prevail (see Tepper, 2000; Willekens and Lievens, 2016; Zinkhan et al., 2004). Therefore, we add to H1a and H2a the expectation that gender equality in organization of the spheres of work (H1b) and care for the family (H2b) will have a stronger positive effect on the frequency of highbrow cultural participation for men than women, thus reducing the gender gap.

Considering the effect of human development

Human development refers to the extent to which people in a country can live long, healthy, educated lives and have access to resources for a decent standard of living (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2016). As such, human development complements purely economic perspectives on societal development by also incorporating living standard and quality-of-life dimensions. It represents important structural and cultural transformations of modernized Western societies (Inglehart, 1997; Noll, 2016; Schofer and Meyer, 2005). Moreover, we know that human development is closely related to both gender equality and highbrow participation in a country (Gerhards et al., 2009, 2013). By contrasting the effect of gender equality that captures the gendered nature of the leisure activities under study with the effect of human development that affects highbrow leisure participation because of its high-status, exclusive, and inequality-related aspects, we get a more complete picture of how societal contexts affect men’s and women’s cultural consumption.

There are several ways in which developed societies contribute to a context in which many people want to participate more frequently in highbrow culture. Some are related to leisure-time availability, and others concern the cultural capital-enhancing and inequality-related properties of highbrow consumption: for example, increased leisure time and the central role it plays in people’s lives (Haller et al., 2013; Noll, 2016; Verbakel, 2013; Webster et al., 2015), greater emphasis on opportunities for self-expression (Welzel et al., 2003), increasing upward social mobility (Yaish and Andersen, 2012), higher levels of educational attainment and a greater valuation of human capital (Schofer and Meyer, 2005), and the importance of achieved status (vs ascribed status) (Mäenpää and Jalovaara, 2015). Moreover, developed countries with high living standards have larger cultural supply and easier access for all to highbrow cultural activities (Feder and Katz-Gerro, 2012; Getzner, 2015; Van Hek and Kraaykamp, 2013). Not surprisingly, research shows that overall levels of highbrow cultural participation are higher in wealthier and more developed European Union (EU) countries (Gerhards et al., 2013; Van Hek and Kraaykamp, 2013). Therefore, we expect to find that the level of human development has a positive effect on the frequency of highbrow cultural participation for both men and women (H3a).

Moreover, we expect that development has a stronger effect on men than on women. Because cultural capital is a means to acquire status in a context where achieved status (rather than ascribed status) is highly valued (Blossfeld, 2009; Mäenpää and Jalovaara, 2015) and where there is high social mobility (Yaish and Andersen, 2012), we can expect that social groups that initially participate less in highbrow cultural activities, such as men, will slowly catch up with groups with higher participation.² Similar processes are found for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups who traditionally had restricted access to high culture (Gerhards et al., 2013). Social class differences in highbrow cultural consumption, for example, are smaller in countries with high levels of human development. Also, Van Hek and Kraaykamp (2013) show that high educational attainment is less predictive of highbrow cultural consumption in countries with high levels of social mobility and that individuals with a lower level of education and with fewer financial resources are less restricted in their access to highbrow cultural participation in wealthier countries. Therefore, we add to H3a the expectation that the level of human development has a stronger positive effect on the frequency of highbrow participation for men than women, thus reducing the gender gap (H3b).

Figure 1 summarizes the proposed mechanisms as well as the corresponding hypotheses we will test.

Figure 1.

Schematic visualization of the effect of gender equality in the spheres of work and family care and human development on men’s and women’s highbrow cultural participation and the corresponding hypotheses.

Data and methods

Data

We use data from the Eurobarometer 79.2 survey, which was conducted in the 28 member states of the EU in 2013 (European Commission, 2013a). This survey contains comparable data on cultural participation from 27,563 respondents. Representative stratified probability samples of about 1000 respondents per country were collected using a face-to-face, computer-assisted interviewing mode. All Eurobarometer data are publicly available via GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences. More detailed methodological information can be found elsewhere (European Commission, 2013b). Eurobarometer surveys do not provide response rates.

For the analyses presented in this article, we omitted students and respondents younger than 25 years old. Respondents aged 25 years or older are likely to have finished their education and to have left the parental home. Respondents with missing values on one of the variables were excluded from the dataset. The analyses were performed on 23,028 respondents nested in 28 countries, an average of about 822 respondents per country (see Table 1 for the number of respondents per country).

Table 1.

Sample description and country-level characteristics by country (n = 23,028).

Country	Country abbreviation	Sample size	GEI: work	GEI: care	HDI
Austria	AT	805	66.5	33.0	0.880
Belgium	BE	840	59.5	53.5	0.880
Bulgaria	BG	836	58.7	20.1	0.776
Croatia	HR	816	53.6	32.1	0.812
Cyprus	CY	388	74.0	32.9	0.848
Czech Republic	CZ	852	54.2	29.1	0.861
Denmark	DK	886	76.8	79.3	0.900
Estonia	EE	860	62.0	70.9	0.839
Finland	FI	855	72.6	50.2	0.879
France	FR	889	61.3	40.3	0.884
Germany	DE	1239	62.2	36.5	0.911
Great Britain	GB	1125	69.5	52.7	0.890
Greece	GR	848	56.9	21.1	0.854
Hungary	HU	872	60.7	51.8	0.817
Ireland	IE	818	65.8	56.7	0.901
Italy	IT	828	53.8	40.4	0.842
Latvia	LV	805	63.3	76.4	0.808
Lithuania	LT	786	55.6	36.2	0.831
Luxembourg	LU	438	63.6	48.0	0.880
Malta	MT	433	60.7	40.6	0.827
Poland	PL	841	55.5	26.9	0.833
Portugal	PT	822	59.1	50.2	0.822
Romania	RO	832	61.6	25.5	0.782
Slovakia	SK	868	52.8	26.7	0.829
Slovenia	SI	830	63.6	45.9	0.874
Spain	ES	813	59.6	56.5	0.869
Sweden	SE	939	81.0	65.3	0.897
The Netherlands	NL	864	69.0	70.6	0.915
European Union		23,028	62.6	45.3	0.855

Source: Data – Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013 (European Commission, 2013a); GEI – European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE, 2015: 158, 161); HDI – UNDP (2014: 160).

GEI: Gender Equality Index; HDI: Human Development Index.

Dependent variables

To measure highbrow cultural participation, we use information on participation in three types of highbrow cultural activities: (1) theater; (2) ballet, dance performance, and opera; and (3) museum and art gallery. These activities are often-used indicators of highbrow cultural participation. While theater, ballet, dance performance, and opera attendance are gender-typed as feminine activities, gender-typing museum visits is more complicated; museums can have diverse focuses, ranging from art – considered feminine – to science and technology – which have masculine connotations (Nosek et al., 2002; Zinkhan et al., 2004). Respondents indicated how many times in the past 12 months they had participated in these activities. Possible answers were ‘not in the past 12 months’, ‘1–2 times’, ‘3–5 times’, and ‘more than 5 times’. Responses range from 0 (no participation) to 3 (very frequent participation). Most respondents had not participated or had only participated irregularly in the three highbrow activities. There is a general trend toward low highbrow participation in many Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia) and in some Southern European countries (Cyprus, Greece, and Portugal). In contrast, participation in the three types of activities is generally high in Western Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands), in the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia, and in Sweden (plots available upon request).

To analyze this data, a first option would be to use multinomial models. However, these models estimate the effect of gender for the three categories of participation (compared to the reference category ‘no participation’) separately. This leads to power issues because of the skewed distribution of the dependent variables: frequent participation is generally rare and almost non-existent in some countries, making it very difficult to fit the necessary models. Using binary logit models would solve these issues, but then information on the frequency of participation is lost. So, instead, we use a multilevel Poisson regression, which allows modeling the frequency of participation. The (skewed) distribution of the dependent variables fits the theoretical distribution of the Poisson regression. Thus, the dependent variables function as count variables (instead of ordinal variables) in the analyses.

We analyze each cultural practice separately instead of focusing on one specific activity or using a compositional scale. Finding similar mechanisms among the three highbrow practices would strengthen our argument that human development and country-level gender equality in the organization of work and family care partly explain women’s and men’s highbrow consumption. Descriptive statistics are available in Table 2.

Table 2.

Descriptive statistics for the individual-level variables.

Dependent variables	Mean	Standard deviation
Theater attendance	0.425	0.746
Ballet, dance performance, and opera attendance	0.235	0.584
Museum and art gallery visits	0.562	0.867
Independent variables	Categories	%
Gender	Men (ref.)	44.7
Gender	Women	55.3
Child(ren) aged 14 or younger in the household	No (ref.)	73.6
	Yes	26.4
Marital status	Married (ref.)	58.4
	Cohabiting	9.6
	Single	12.4
	Divorced	9.3
	Widowed	10.4
Occupational status	Service class job (ref.)	14.8
	Intermediate class job	24.2
	Working class job	12.0
	Homemaker	7.1
	Unemployed	8.5
	Retired or unable to work	33.4
Educational attainment	Education until age 15	19.1
	Education until age 16–19	46.7
	Education until age 20 or over (ref.)	34.2
Financial strain (difficulties in paying the bills at the end of the month)	Almost never or never difficulties (ref.)	56.6
	From time to time difficulties	29.0
	Most of the time difficulties	14.5
Size of the community	Rural or village	35.9
	Small- or middle-sized town	37.1
	Large town (ref.)	27.0
Age group (years)	25–34 (ref.)	15.7
	35–44	18.8
	45–54	20.1
	55–64	19.6
	65–74	16.8
	≥75	9.1

Source: Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013 (European Commission, 2013a).

Independent variables at the country level

The country-level independent variables are the work and care components of the Gender Equality Index (GEI) and the Human Development Index (HDI). The country-level variables are grand-mean centered in the analyses. As an indicator for societal gender equality in the spheres of work and family care, we use the work- and care-related dimensions of the GEI of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE, 2013, 2015). The work-related dimension reflects equality in terms of access to employment, low segregation into female sectors (education, human health, social work), and quality of work (e.g. a flexible working schedule). A score of ‘0’ signifies total inequality and ‘100’, total equality. Table 1 indicates that Slovakia has the lowest level of equality in terms of work in 2012 (52.8); Sweden shows the highest (81.0) (EIGE, 2015: 158).

The care aspect of gender equality relates to gender gaps in the time men and women participating in the labor market devote to childcare and domestic tasks (e.g. cooking, cleaning). This measure has a low average in the EU, suggesting that on average care inequalities remain high in today’s European countries and that those societies often retain traditional divisions of household labor, even when women participate in the labor market. A score of ‘0’ signifies total inequality and ‘100’, total equality. There is considerable cross-national variation: Denmark demonstrates the greatest gender equality regarding time used for care in 2012 with a score of 79.3 (EIGE, 2015: 161); Bulgaria has the lowest score of 20.1 (see Table 1 for other countries’ GEI scores).

Although based on ‘objective’ indicators such as female labor market participation instead of (gender-role) attitudes, GEI may function as a proxy for gender-role stereotypes. Indeed, making a distinction between the structural and cultural dimensions of gender equality is somewhat arbitrary because both dimensions are fundamentally intertwined: the opportunity structure (e.g. the (un)availability of public childcare) is not only affected by a country’s prevailing gender norms but also validates existing cultural beliefs.

The HDI is an instrument developed by the UNDP (2014, 2016) to measure a country’s level of human development. The HDI’s advantage is that it is embedded in the broader (cross-national comparative) literature on human development (Gerhards et al., 2009; Inglehart and Norris, 2003) and is based on ‘objective’ indicators that are highly comparable across EU countries because of consistent data collection. Ivanova et al. (1999) and Booysen (2002) positively evaluated the validity and usefulness of the HDI to measure human development processes. This indicator is based on life expectancy at birth, educational achievement indicated by mean years of schooling for adults 25 years and older and expected years of education for children entering school, and standard of living as measured by gross national income (GNI) per capita. As reported in Table 1, Bulgaria (HDI: 0.776) is the EU country with the lowest level of human development in 2012 (UNDP, 2014: 160); the country with the highest human development is the Netherlands (HDI: 0.915).

The country-level indicators have correlations ranging between 0.43 and 0.56 (r_{HDI-GEI: work} = 0.53; r_{HDI-GEI: care} = 0.43; r_{GEI: care-GEI: work} = 0.56). However, we are convinced that multicollinearity does not bias the presented estimates. Additional analyses indicate that, generally, estimates for the country-level indicators in models with and models without the other country-level predictors are highly similar.³ Furthermore, comparison of both analyses showed that there is no inflation of standard errors, which typically signals multicollinearity problems and results in wider confidence intervals (Clark, 2013; Shieh and Fouladi, 2003: 982). Because the country-level predictors may function as a proxy for each other, the models presented use them as controls.

Individual-level indicators

The most important indicator on the individual level is gender (0 = man, 1 = woman). We also include the following controls: having or not having child(ren) younger than 15 in the household, marital status, occupational status, educational attainment, financial strain, community size, and age group.⁴ Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics for individual-level variables.

Method

To study the effect of contextual characteristics on women’s and men’s highbrow cultural participation, we use multilevel analyses (Hox, 2010). This technique acknowledges the hierarchical structure of the data: individuals are nested in countries. We employ a two-level Poisson model (with logit link function, second-order penalized quasi-likelihood (PQL)) to simultaneously estimate individual- and country-level predictors of the frequency of participation in the three highbrow cultural activities (see Hox, 2010, on the analysis of categorical and count data: 103–122). In line with Bryan and Jenkins’ (2016) recommendations for multilevel analyses based on a limited number of countries, the models are estimated using Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation methods as well, and the results of the second-order PQL estimation presented in Table 3 are robust (with the random parts slightly underestimated). Moreover, there is no reason to believe that the assumption of the Poisson distribution (i.e. mean equals the variance) is violated in ways that would influence our results. Finally, if the analyses exclude single countries, the results hold.

Table 3.

Multilevel Poisson models of theater attendance; ballet, dance performance, and opera attendance; and museum and art gallery visits of 23,028 respondents in 28 EU countries, including Poisson regression coefficients and standard errors.^a

	Theater			Ballet, dance performance, and opera			Museum and art gallery
	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3
	B	B	B	B	B	B	B	B	B
Individual level^a
Intercept	−0.127* (0.057)	−0.130* (0.057)	−0.133* (0.057)	−0.740*** (0.080)	−0.743*** (0.080)	−0.739*** (0.080)	0.109* (0.054)	0.109* (0.054)	0.103° (0.053)
Woman	0.322*** (0.012)	0.325*** (0.030)	0.327*** (0.029)	0.461*** (0.046)	0.465*** (0.045)	0.462*** (0.044)	0.104*** (0.020)	0.104*** (0.020)	0.144*** (0.020)
Country level
GEI: work	−0.009 n.s. (0.007)	−0.006 n.s. (0.007)	−0.006 n.s. (0.007)	−0.010 n.s. (0.010)	−0.017° (0.009)	−0.017° (0.009)	−0.003 n.s. (0.008)	−0.004 n.s. (0.007)	−0.003 n.s. (0.007)
GEI: care	0.011*** (0.003)	0.009** (0.003)	0.011*** (0.003)	0.010* (0.004)	0.015*** (0.004)	0.010* (0.004)	0.012*** (0.003)	0.013*** (0.003)	0.012*** (0.003)
HDI	5.130*** (1.220)	5.311*** (1.222)	4.167** (1.292)	4.172** (1.544)	4.048** (1.539)	5.940** (1.832)	4.469*** (1.285)	4.473*** (1.287)	5.084*** (1.309)
Cross-level interactions
Woman × GEI: work	−0.006 n.s. (0.004)			−0.009 n.s. (0.006)			−0.002 n.s. (0.002)
Woman × GEI: care		−0.004* (0.002)			−0.005* (0.003)			−0.001 n.s. (0.001)
Woman × HDI			−1.899* (0.760)			−2.102° (1.161)			−1.189* (0.494)
Random part
Intercept	0.039 (0.012)	0.038 (0.012)	0.039 (0.012)	0.086 (0.028)	0.086 (0.028)	0.083 (0.027)	0.041 (0.012)	0.041 (0.012)	0.041 (0.012)
Gender	0.012 (0.006)	0.010 (0.006)	0.009 (0.006)	0.030 (0.015)	0.027 (0.014)	0.025 (0.013)	0.001 (0.002)	0.001 (0.002)	0.000 (0.000)

Source: Eurobarometer 79.2, 2013 (European Commission, 2013a).

EU: European Union; GEI: Gender Equality Index; HDI: Human Development Index.

Models are controlled for socioeconomic and family-related indicators, age group, and community size. Full tables are available upon request.

***

p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05; °p < 0.1; n.s.: not significant.

In the ‘Results’ section, we present random slope models in which not only the overall level of participation (regardless of gender) varies across countries (i.e. intercept variation) but the effect of gender also varies across countries (i.e. slope variation). We use cross-level interactions between the country-level predictors and gender to assess whether these country characteristics have differential effects for men and women and explain cross-country variation in the gender gap. It is not possible to estimate all cross-level interactions at the same time as this would lead to multicollinearity problems. Therefore, we present a separate model for every cross-level interaction for each dependent variable (resulting in nine models). The multilevel models are estimated in MLwiN.

Results

Description of men’s and women’s cultural consumption across EU countries

First, to explore gender differences in highbrow participation across EU countries and their association with the country-level indicators, we plot GEI and HDI against gender differences in participation (vs non-participation) in the three cultural practices (see Figures 2 to 4). For each country, we measure gender differences (on the Y-axis) by dividing the proportion of all women who participated at least once in the activity by the proportion of all men who participated in the activity. In each country, a ratio of female to male participation rates higher than ‘1’ indicates that women participate more; a ratio smaller than ‘1’ indicates that men participate more. Thus, applied to theater attendance (see Figure 2), results show that gender differences vary from non-existent in France (a score of 1) to a female participation rate that is 75 percent higher than the male participation rate in Bulgaria (a score of 1.75) to a higher male participation rate in Spain (a score below 1). Comparing the figures of the three cultural practices leads to the following observations: First, the comparison of female to male highbrow participation rates varies considerably across EU countries, ranging from (slightly) higher male participation rates to equal participation to much higher female participation rates. Second, men’s participation rates in museum and art gallery visits are higher than women’s in several EU countries in contrast to the other activities, in which female participation rates are generally (much) higher. Third, although there are inconsistencies between practices, higher female to male highbrow participation rates are generally found in many Eastern European countries (e.g. Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), while female and male participation rates are more or less equal in a diverse group of – mainly Western – European countries (e.g. Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Spain, and the Netherlands).

Figure 2.

Theater attendance – ratio of the proportions of participating women and men by GEI: work-related equality, GEI: care-related equality, and HDI.

Figure 3.

Ballet, dance performance, and opera attendance – ratio of the proportions of participating women and men by GEI: work-related equality, GEI: care-related equality, and HDI.

Figure 4.

Museum and art gallery visits – ratio of the proportions of participating women and men by GEI: work-related equality, GEI: care-related equality, and HDI.

Moreover, the bivariate results suggest that there is a negative relationship between gender differences in cultural participation and work-related GEI, care-related GEI, and HDI. Although countries differ, in general men and women seem to participate more equally in countries with higher scores on HDI and GEI (work and care). These bivariate results obviously ignore frequency of participation and do not consider the differential composition of countries on socioeconomic and family-related indicators.

Random slope models

Table 3 presents the results from our multilevel analyses. Models 1, 2, and 3 present, respectively, the differential effects of work-related GEI, care-related GEI, and HDI on men’s and women’s cultural consumption for each cultural practice.⁵ One can read the following things from this table (example below applies to Model 3 which shows the effects of HDI on men’s and women’s theater attendance): (1) the average effect of gender (or gender gap, or – in this case – the effect of being a woman), which is represented by the coefficient next to ‘Woman’ (b_Woman = 0.327***); (2) the effect of the country-level indicator under study on the participation of men (b_HDI = 4.167**); and (3) the cross-level interaction coefficient (b_Woman × _HDI = –1.899*) which indicates the differential effect of this country-level indicator on women (compared to men). Negative coefficients indicate that the effects of the country-level indicators are lower for women than for men, thus partly explaining the gender gap. We observe that, on average, European women participate more frequently in the three highbrow cultural practices than men.

In Table 3, Model 1 under each dependent variable shows the effect of gender equality in the organization of work on the cultural consumption of men and women in Europe. The pattern is consistent across the three cultural practices: neither the effect of GEI: work nor the effect of the cross-level interaction (Woman × GEI: work) is significant. This means that the frequency of highbrow cultural participation of both men and women is not higher in countries with a more gender-equal organization of work. Moreover, the size of the gender gap in a country is unrelated to country-level gender equality in the realm of work. Therefore, Hypotheses 1a and 1b are rejected.

Each dependent variable’s Model 2 shows the effect of gender equality in the organization of family care on highbrow cultural participation of both men and women across Europe (see Table 3). We find that the patterns across different cultural practices are fairly consistent. Gender equality in care (GEI: care-related equality) has a positive effect on frequency of theater attendance (depicted on the left-hand side of Figure 5) and ballet, dance performance, and opera attendance (depicted on the left-hand side of Figure 6) for both men and women, but this effect is smaller for women than for men (as the cross-level interaction terms are negative). For museum and art gallery visits, care-related gender equality has the same positive effect for men and women (b_{GEI: care} = 0.013*** and b_{Woman × GEI: care} = –0.001 n.s.). Therefore, across EU countries, higher gender equality in the organization of care is associated with higher levels of participation in the three highbrow cultural practices for both men and women; this accords with Hypothesis 2a. Moreover, for the female-typed activities theater, ballet, dance performance, and opera attendance, the effect of gender equality in the organization of care (i.e. men engaging in the feminine sphere of care) is larger for men, and thus, the gender gap is smaller in countries with greater equality and larger in countries with less equality. This is in line with Hypothesis 2b.

Figure 5.

The effects of gender equality in the organization of care and human development on the frequency of theater attendance, by gender.

Figure 6.

The effects of gender equality in the organization of care and human development on the frequency of ballet, dance performance, and opera attendance, by gender.

As shown in each dependent variable’s Model 3, the effect of HDI on the cultural consumption of men and women in Europe is similar across the three cultural practices (depicted in Figures 5 to 7). Human development has a positive effect on the frequency of participation in highbrow cultural activities for both women and men, but this effect is smaller for women than for men (as the interaction terms between gender (being a woman) and HDI are negative for all three activities). Thus, across EU countries, higher human development is associated with higher levels of participation in these three highbrow cultural activities for both men and women; this agrees with Hypothesis 3a. Moreover, the effect of HDI is stronger for men than for women, so gender differences in frequency of highbrow cultural participation are smaller in EU countries with higher human development levels and larger in EU countries with lower human development. This is consistent with Hypothesis 3b.

Figure 7.

The effect of human development on the frequency of museum and art gallery visits, by gender.

Discussion and conclusion

Findings and contribution

Because highbrow cultural participation is an important status marker in Western societies (Lamont and Lareau, 1988), women’s preference for highbrow culture is considered puzzling (cf. Lizardo, 2006). Existing individual-level research focuses on women’s position in the work and family spheres to explain this gender gap in participation in highbrow cultural activities. This article highlights the feminine connotation of these leisure activities next to their exclusive character and recognizes that unequal opportunities and expectations across societies affect not only women’s but also men’s cultural consumption.

Specifically, this cross-national comparative study examined how (1) gender equality in the societal division of labor, measured by female labor market participation and low segregation in the work sphere and by the division of housework and childcare in the family sphere, and (2) human development affect the frequency of both women’s and men’s theater attendance, museum and art gallery visits, and ballet, dance performance, and opera attendance. While gender equality would explain cross-national differences in men’s and women’s cultural participation because of the gendered nature of artistic leisure activities, societal development captures the high-status, exclusive, and inequality-related aspects of leisure-time highbrow consumption. In line with our expectations, multilevel analyses of the Eurobarometer 79.2 data (2013) on 28 EU countries indicated that, overall, gender equality in the organization of family care and human development positively affect the frequency of both women’s and men’s highbrow participation, but the effects are stronger for men than for women. So, gender gaps are smaller in EU countries where men engage more in the feminine sphere of care and in societies with higher levels of development.

Two unexpected findings need further attention. First, an exception to the overall pattern is that gender equality in the organization of care did not explain the gender gap in frequency of museum and art gallery visits, although it explained the gender gaps in the other activities and women’s and men’s overall museum visits. A first explanation relates to the fact that museum offerings are less clearly gender-typed (which is also reflected in the smaller gender gaps compared to the other two activities). For example, attending an art museum has a feminine connotation, while science and technology museums may have a masculine connotation (Nosek et al., 2002; Zinkhan et al., 2004). Therefore, museum visits are less closely linked to the idea of separate spheres and traditional gender-role expectations that are at the core of gender differences in artistic participation (Tepper, 2000; Zinkhan et al., 2004). Consequently, gender equality in the organization of care, which indicates the crossing of critical gender boundaries, may be less important. Other explanations are that museum visits do not require specific starting times, can occur throughout the day (instead of only in the evening), and can involve children.

Second, country-level gender equality in the organization of work did not explain cross-country variation in (the gender gap in) highbrow cultural consumption, contrary to our initial expectations. Considering that we proposed a leisure-related explanation for gender equality’s effect on both men’s and women’s cultural consumption, it is likely that the organization of care, which is measured by gender equality in time used for housework and childcare by working adults, better captures a country’s opportunities for outsourcing domestic tasks to the public and service sector (see Craig and Mullan, 2013; Marx and Vandelannoote, 2015; Nyberg, 2015). This explanation is supported by the finding that work-related equality affects cultural participation in models that do not control for care-related equality.

Moreover, in this study, the closing gender gap in cultural participation is expected to be the result of equality’s larger effects on men than on women, which may explain the insignificant effects of work-related inequality on the gender gap in cultural participation. Indeed, policies generally aim to increase female labor market participation, not to decrease men’s, and the norm that men should be the primary breadwinner is very resilient (Bettio, 2017; Ciccia and Bleijenbergh, 2014). As a consequence, female labor market participation and segregation may in the first place express expectations toward women, so men would be less affected.

Finally, the finding that gender differences are smaller when men enter the feminine sphere of care and not when women enter the masculine sphere of work is in line with the idea that people first and foremost ‘behaviorally “mark” or signify the boundary between the sexes, by doing or not doing the feminine (caregiving) [rather] than by doing or not doing the masculine (providing)’ (Ridgeway, 2011: 130). Our findings indicate that gender beliefs regarding feminine-typed artistic participation are only really put into question as men enter the feminine sphere. Moreover, this resonates with Micheal Messner’s (2011) argument that in modern societies ‘soft essentialist discourses’ are becoming dominant, which maintain strict essentialist ideas about men and boys while giving women and girls more social latitude to cross gender boundaries.

Thus, our findings underline the importance of the gendered approach used in this study, which signals that not only women have a gender and that men’s role in the gender gap in feminine-typed cultural participation is underestimated (Lagaert et al., 2017; Lehman and Dumais, 2017). Indeed, while existing research refers to the ‘puzzle of women’s highbrow culture consumption’ (see Lizardo, 2006), this study indicates that societal gender equality and gender norms affect men’s cultural consumption as well, and in some respects, affect it even more than women’s, a finding similar to that of earlier studies (Lagaert et al., 2017; Lehman and Dumais, 2017).

While current cross-national comparative research on inequalities in cultural consumption mainly focuses on structural social class-related inequalities (see, for instance, Falk and Katz-Gerro, 2016; Gerhards et al., 2013; Katz-Gerro, 2002; Van Hek and Kraaykamp, 2013), this article demonstrates the importance of the position of men and women in society and societal development in understanding inequalities in men’s and women’s cross-national cultural participation. Because we place men’s and women’s highbrow cultural consumption in its broader, societal family- and work-related context, this study complements existing research that seeks the origin of women’s higher participation in individual-level differences in the spheres of work and family (Christin, 2012).

Further research and limitations

The results invite us to consider how the gender gap in cultural taste evolves over time and how this relates to a country’s level of gender equality and development. Based on the findings in this article, one would expect to find that over time, the gender gap in highbrow cultural tastes in EU countries would decrease and decrease at a faster rate among younger cohorts because these cohorts were socialized in a more gender-equal and developed context. Thus, future research on longitudinal changes in the gender gap in highbrow cultural consumption could give additional insight into how living in gender-equal contexts influences participation.

This research also has some limitations; however, these could provide impetus for new research. First, we studied a specific group of European countries that on average score high on development and gender equality. Further research should evaluate whether these macro-level mechanisms are relevant across a more diverse group of countries. So, comparable and high-quality data in other (non-Western) countries need to be collected.

Second, our focus was on highbrow cultural activities that appeal to a select group of participants. We expect that gender equality and human development stimulate men’s and women’s participation in non-exclusive gender-typed cultural activities as well because the time availability arguments used would hold for other leisure activities as well (Craig and Mullan, 2013; Webster et al., 2015) and because contemporary, urban cultural practices increasingly function as cultural capital, that is, ‘emerging forms of cultural capital’ (Prieur and Savage, 2013; Roose, 2015). A study on sport event attendance, which is cited as such an emerging form of capital (Roose, 2015), indicates that human development positively affects men’s and women’s attendance (Lagaert and Roose, 2016). Moreover, the gender gap in this masculine-typed activity is – similar to the feminine cultural activities studied here – smaller in gender-equal contexts (Lagaert and Roose, 2016).

Third, the multilevel approach used reveals general patterns but did not allow to consider the idiosyncratic historical evolutions of specific countries and the effect these developments might have on men’s and women’s cultural participation. These country-specific trajectories could be important as well (see, for instance, Fishman and Lizardo, 2013). Thus, this study should be seen as an open invitation to further engender cultural taste.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ad Coenen, Stijn Daenekindt, and Sarah Van de Velde for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Foundation - Flanders (grant number FWO14/ASP/149 to S.L.).

ORCID iD

Susan Lagaert

Notes

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