Misperception of peer beliefs reinforces inequitable gender norms among Tanzanian men

Abstract

Gender role ideology, i.e. beliefs about how genders should behave, is shaped by social learning. Accordingly, if perceptions about the beliefs of others are inaccurate this may impact trajectories of cultural change. Consistent with this premise, recent studies report evidence of a tendency to overestimate peer support for inequitable gender norms, especially among men, and that correcting apparent 'norm misperception' promotes transitions to relatively egalitarian beliefs. However, supporting evidence largely relies on self-report measures vulnerable to social desirability bias. Consequently, observed patterns may reflect researcher measurement error rather than participant misperception. Addressing this shortcoming, we examine men's gender role ideology using both conventional self-reported and a novel wife-reported measure of men's beliefs in an urbanising community in Tanzania. We confirm that participants overestimate peer support for gender inequity. However, the latter measure, which we argue more accurately captures men's true beliefs, implies that this tendency is relatively modest in magnitude and scope. Overestimation was most pronounced among men holding relatively inequitable beliefs, consistent with misperception of peer beliefs reinforcing inequitable norms. Furthermore, older and poorly educated men overestimated peer support for gender inequity the most, suggesting that outdated and limited social information contribute to norm misperception in this context.

Keywords: Cultural evolution; gender; global health; social learning; social norms.

Graphical abstract

Figure 1.

A participant survey. All surveys were conducted in private settings (left panel). Men were first asked to report their relative agreement or disagreement with 20 statements relating to gender roles. A visual aid of possible responses (strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree) was used to reinforce the use of all available response options (middle panel). After declaring their own attitudes, participants were then asked how many out of 10 hypothetical peers they estimate would agree or strongly agree with the same 20 statements. Once again, a visual aid was used to reinforce the use of all available response options (right panel).

Figure 2.

A graphical depiction of the distribution of estimates of peer support for inequitable gender norms compared to actual support as based on self-reported beliefs. Using self-reported measures of men's beliefs implies that men overestimate peer support for inequitable gender norms, often quite substantially. According to this measure, for 18/20 statements, men estimated that significantly more of their peers would support inequitable gender norms than actually do. Bubbles represent the distribution of men's estimates, with the size of the bubble indicating the number of participants making each possible estimate and the thick shaded bar indicating the median estimate. The thin black line represents the actual percentage of men who supported inequitable gender norms for each statement based on self-reported beliefs. Statements are numbered to match Table 1. Support for inequitable gender norms is indicated by agreeing with or not agreeing with statements opposing and favouring women's empowerment respectively. Figure S1 also presents this data as conventional histograms for each statement. See Table 1 for statistical test results and confidence intervals.

Figure 3.

A graphical depiction of the distribution of estimates of peer support for inequitable gender norms compared with actual support as based on wife-reported beliefs. Using wife-reported measures of men's beliefs also implies that men overestimate peer support for inequitable gender norms. However, this tendency is reduced in magnitude and scope. According to this alternative measure, which we suggest more accurately measures men's beliefs, for 11/20 statements presented, men estimated that significantly more of their peers would support inequitable gender norms than actually do. Bubbles represent the distribution of men's estimates, with the size of the bubble indicating the number of participants making each possible estimate and the thick shaded bar indicating the median estimate. The thin black line represents the actual percentage of men who supported inequitable gender norms for each statement based on wife-reported beliefs. Statements are numbered to match Table 1. Support for inequitable gender norms is indicated by agreeing with or not agreeing with statements opposing and favouring women's empowerment respectively. Figure S2 also presents this data as conventional histograms for each statement. See Table 1 for statistical test results and confidence intervals.

Figure 4.

The distribution of men's (a) overestimation and (b) inaccuracy scores, as calculated based on men's self- and wife-reported beliefs. Apparent tendencies to both overestimate peer support for inequitable gender norms and make inaccurate estimates in either direction are significantly lower when using wife as opposed to self-reported measures of men's beliefs. Vertical lines display mean values for self-reported (solid line) and wife-reported measures (dashed lined). See text for means, standard deviations and statistical tests for differences between self- and wife-reported measure based scores.

Figure 5.

Scatterplots showing the association of (a) overestimation and (b) inaccuracy scores with men's self-reported support for women's empowerment. Men who overestimate and make inaccurate estimates of peer support for inequitable gender norms to a larger degree tend to self-report lower support for women's empowerment. These relationships hold when using both self-report and wife-report based measures of the overestimation and inaccuracy score. See text for supporting statistics.