Polarization, religiosity, and support for gender equality: A comparative study across four Muslim-majority countries

Abstract

This study focuses on links between religion, political polarization, and support for gender equality, empirically studying Turkey, Indonesia, Tunisia, and Malaysia. These four Muslim-majority electoral democracies include different degrees of polarization between secularists and Islamists, whereby Islamists vilify secularists' supposed Western ideals as gender equality. We explore whether regional polarization between Islamist and secularist sentiments impacts common peoples' gender equality attitudes and the link between their religious and political positions and their gender equality support. Applying multilevel analyses to World Values Survey data, we find that the more strongly and politically religious and more right-wing people tend to support gender equality less, while regional polarization does not significantly affect gender equality in general. However, polarization does fuel support for women's political leadership (not educational and economic equality) among men, which might echo the strategical deployment of female candidates in polarized regions. Clearly, gender equality's dimensions have their own dynamics.