ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN IN TAIWAN AND CHINA - CURRENT STATUS, PROBLEMS, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE-RESEARCH

The goals of this article are to review published data from both Engli sh and Chinese sources on current attitudes toward women in Taiwan and China and to discuss issues in cross-cultural research that may affec t the discovery and reporting of effects. Chinese women in both countr ies, when compared to men, had more liberal attitudes toward women, bu t women in China had more traditionally oriented attitudes than women in Taiwan. Yang's (1986) modernization theory was used to explain thes e results. There was also some overlap of gender roles in both culture s, with some traditional masculine (or feminine) roles played by the o ther gender. We propose that modernization may lead not only to greate r gender equality but also to changes in the nature of gender roles, l eading to greater gender-role overlap, in which it is advantageous for both men and women to have less distinctive gender-role characteristi cs. Finally, issues of construct validation, response sets, and altern ative approaches to scale development are addressed, and suggestions f or future research are offered.