“When a mother is employed, her children suffer”: A quantitative analysis of factors influencing attitudes towards women’s employment and gender roles in Rwanda

Socialist feminist theory has assumed that patriarchy and capitalism are the main sources of women\u27s limited roles and related attitudes in society. Informed by this theory and using the data from the World Values Survey wave six, this study aimed at analysing the factors influencing individuals’ attitudes towards women’s employment and gender roles in Rwandan society. A hierarchical multiple regression modelling method was used to analyse data through R and SPSS statistics programs. The main findings yielded by three research models show that Rwandans express ambivalent attitudes toward women’s work and gender roles, comprising both traditional and non-traditional attitudes. Women, young people, highly educated people, private-sector workers and people who rarely use mass media have non-traditional attitudes while men, old people, less educated people, public sector workers, and media-heavy users hold traditional attitudes toward gender roles. Overall, these results bear important theoretical implications as they broaden the existing literature by arguing that patriarchy and capitalism are not the only factors determining peoples’ attitudes on women’s employment and gender roles as claimed by socialist feminist theory. Instead, the study suggests that additional dynamics including gender, age, educational level, job sectors, and mass media factors work together to shape individuals’ attitudes on women’s work and gender roles