| Summary/Abstract |
This study compares gender discrimination or sexism in mainland China and Taiwan by means of a social experiment. Mainland China, with its radical egalitarian socialist policies implemented in a centrally planned economy and during the Cultural Revolution, serves as the treatment group in this social experiment. Taiwan, with its conventional path of economic modernisation, political liberalisation and importation of post-material values, is set as the control group. Using the Sixth Wave World Values Surveys, this study finds a higher level of explicit sexism in mainland China than in Taiwan due to China's post-Mao market reform. Interestingly, Taiwan shows a stronger effect of hidden sexism than China. China's low level of hidden sexism could be attributed to its radical social and economic egalitarian policies from the 1950s to the 1970s. The article concludes by suggesting that while democracy is capable of promoting postmodern values such as feminism, it is less effective in eliminating hidden sexism, and that government policy is imperative to mitigating the negative effect of market capitalism on gender equality.
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