


































Advances in Politics and Economics 
ISSN 2576-1382 (Print) ISSN 2576-1390 (Online) 

Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 

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81 
 

Original Paper 

How Gender Ideology Affects the Public Attitude towards the 

Common Prosperity Policy? 

Yueming Ouyang
1*

 

1
 School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China 

*
 Yueming Ouyang School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China 

 

Received: March 9, 2023        Accepted: April 18, 2023        Online Published: April 28, 2023 

doi:10.22158/ape.v6n2p81          URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/ape.v6n2p81 

 

Abstract 

Most of the existing studies on common prosperity policy in academia use qualitative research methods 

to explore how to achieve common prosperity policy, but there are few quantitative studies on public 

attitudes and other aspects, while public policy response attitudes are of great significance to policy 

implementation. This paper explores the mechanism of its influence on public attitude towards the 

income level gap by introducing the variable of gender ideology through the analysis of data from the 

2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) with a socialist feminist perspective. It is found that gender 

ideology significantly influences public attitude towards closing the income gap, and the more modern 

the gender ideology is, the more positive individuals’ attitude towards closing the income level gap is. 

In addition, gender ideology plays a masking role in the effects of age and education on public attitude 

towards the income level gap and a mediating role in the effects of social class on public attitude 

towards the income level gap. Therefore, the modernization of gender ideology is important for 

improving the public response to the common prosperity policy in China. 

Keywords 

socialist feminism, income inequality, common prosperity, gender ideology, mediating effects 

 

1. Introduction 

Since the 18th Party Congress, the Party Central Committee has grasped the new changes in the stage 

of development and put the gradual realization of common prosperity policy for all people in a more 

important position, and a series of scientifically correct policies and measures have created good 

conditions for the promotion of common prosperity policy. Common prosperity means the prosperity of 

all the people, the prosperity of their material and spiritual lives, not the prosperity of a few people, nor 

a uniform egalitarianism. Now, it has reached the historical stage of solidly promoting common 



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prosperity. We are moving toward the second-century goal, and in order to adapt to the changes in the 

main contradictions of our society and better meet the growing needs of the people for a better life, we 

must make the promotion of common prosperity for all people the focus of our efforts to seek 

happiness for the people and continuously strengthen the Party’s long-term ruling foundation. 

High-quality development requires high-quality workers, and only by promoting common prosperity, 

raising the income of urban and rural residents, and improving human capital can we improve total 

factor productivity and solidify the power base for high-quality development. At present, the global 

income inequality problem is prominent, some countries are divided between the rich and the poor, and 

the middle-class collapse, leading to social tear, political polarization, and populism proliferation, the 

lesson is very profound! Our country must resolutely prevent polarization, promote common prosperity, 

and achieve social harmony and stability. 

In recent years, common prosperity policy has become one of the hot topics in academia. Income 

inequality in China is not only significantly higher than in the United States but also among the highest 

in the world, especially when compared with countries with comparable or higher living standards (Xie 

et al., 2014). In today’s Chinese society, the public generally has a certain perception of the gap 

between the rich and the poor, but there are some differences in the perceptions of different social 

groups on narrowing the income gap, there are some differences in answers to different groups on “how 

big the income gap is”. At the same time, there are also differences in public attitude towards income 

disparity, there are differences in the responses to the question: “How much do you agree with the idea 

of narrowing the income gap”. Therefore, an in-depth study of the factors behind the heterogeneity of 

public attitude towards income disparity is of great importance to narrowing the income disparity and 

making the public respond positively to the policy of common prosperity, as well as to promoting the 

healthy development of society and better meet the growing needs of people for a better life. The 

perception and attitude towards the income gap can affect all aspects of people’s life, such as happiness 

(Oishi et al., 2011) and mortality (Smith et al., 1996; Daly, 1998). 

Socialist feminism was active from the 18th century to the 1960s and was a branch of feminism. 

Socialist feminism believed that the female problem would be fundamentally solved in the workers’ 

movement, the social democratic movement, and the Marxist movement and that the most important 

way for women to be emancipated was through access to the socialist labor market (Lykke, 2020). 

Moreover, the theoretical basis of socialist feminism is historical materialism, with the basic argument 

that material life shapes human consciousness and that the economic system determines the 

superstructure. Specifically, socialist feminism, influenced by Marxist feminism, argues that the unfair 

treatment of women in the labor market is an example of all those who are treated unfairly in the labor 

market. The polarization of the income gap is closely related to gender equality, and the most central 

connection between this perspective and this study is the influence of the sense of gender equality in 

gender ideology on the sense of equality in other dimensions. Individuals with modernized gender 

ideology aspire more to gender equality, so do individuals who aspire to gender equality have a more 



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positive attitude towards closing the gap in income levels in the concept of shared prosperity? The 

sense of equality in this study is by no means egalitarian, but rather, as in the socialist feminist 

perspective, to meet the basic needs of the majority, not to satisfy the luxury desires of the few, not the 

affluence of the few, and not neat and tidy egalitarianism. 

Most of the existing papers use qualitative research methods to explore how to achieve common 

prosperity, but few of them focus on people’s attitudes toward this policy, and few quantitative research 

papers. Different from previous studies, this paper focuses on the public’s response to the policy of 

“common prosperity” and uses a different perspective of socialist feminism to conduct a quantitative 

analysis of income inequality. In view of this, this study attempts to introduce an important variable of 

gender ideology from the perspective of socialist feminism, based on the data of the China Family 

Panel Studies (CFPS) in 2020 and takes “public attitude towards income disparity” as the entry point to 

deeply analyze the influence of demographic, social structure, and cultural factors on the difference in 

attitude towards income disparity. We also attempt to explore the mediating role of gender ideology in 

the difference in attitude towards the income gap. 

 

2. Literature Review and Research Hypothesis 

The income level disparity has been a major concern for scholars in China and abroad. This study 

focuses on “income disparity”, which is one of the focal points of the study of common prosperity 

policy. The academic research on income disparity is divided into five parts, namely, why the income 

disparity is caused, the extent of income disparity (Andrew et al., 2015; Solt, 2020; Zhang et al., 2020), 

perceptions (Verwiebe et al., 2000), reasons (Irena et al., 2021) and attitudes (Andrew et al., 2015; 

Schneider, 2019), and the consumption inequality in the face of income disparity (Krueger et al., 2006). 

Few studies have been conducted on the public response to the common prosperity policy of 

“narrowing the income gap”. 

To discuss citizens’ sense of shared prosperity, we cannot ignore citizens’ attitudes toward income 

disparity and its heterogeneity. Studies on attitudes toward the income level disparity generally have 

two types of measurements, one is based on the current situation, asking “How satisfied are you with 

the current income level disparity?” (Andrew et al., 2015), and “How much do you agree that the 

income gap should be reduced?” (Evans et al., 2018), this paper adopts the latter type of approach to 

measure citizens’ attitudes toward income level disparity. 

There has been some research on both the gender income gap and the general income gap, respectively 

(Hazarika, 2020; Cook et al., 2020), but the link between the gender income gap and the general 

income gap has not received much attention. Socialist feminism argues that gender inequality leads to 

injustices of class, race, sexuality, militarism, and environmental structures (Gordon, 2016). Thus, the 

phenomenon of income gap polarization is closely related to gender income differences, and the sense 

of gender equality in gender ideology brings influence on the sense of equality in other dimensions; 

individuals who modernize their gender ideology aspire to gender equality more, therefore, their sense 



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of equality in other aspects of life will be stronger. Combining the existing studies on gender ideology 

and income status (Nugent et al., 2009), this paper introduces gender ideology as a variable to explore 

its influence on public attitude towards income disparity.  

At present, there are still two shortcomings in many studies that deserve to be added. Firstly, there are 

few quantitative research on public attitudes towards “narrowing the income gap” as a response to the 

common prosperity policy. Most studies have used qualitative methods to explore how to implement 

policies, while positive public attitudes are important for the implementation of a policy. Secondly, In 

addition, most of the existing studies on gender and income gap have focused on gender-caused income 

gap studies rather than attitude studies. Distinguishing from these studies, this paper will explore 

citizenship attitudes.  

Moreover, from the theory of socialist feminism, the modernization of gender ideology has rich and 

complex structural implications with various other aspects of inequality, such as the impact of gender 

ideology on the inequality between humans and nature in environmental issues, among others. Inspired 

by this, this study intends to analyze in depth how the variable of gender ideology, through the lens of 

socialist feminism, has an impact on the public’s attitude toward income disparity. In detail, this paper 

attempts to study whether the more individuals support gender equality, the more they will support 

common prosperity as a policy to eliminate income inequality. 

Based on the previous literature review and the gap analysis, this study proposes the following two 

research hypotheses regarding the public’s attitude toward “narrowing the income gap”. 

Hypothesis 1: Individuals with more modernized gender ideology have a more positive attitude towards 

closing the income level gap compared to individuals with more traditional gender ideology. In other 

words, the more supportive individuals are of gender equality, the more they respond positively to the 

common prosperity policy. 

Hypothesis 2: Gender ideology mediates the relationship between income level gap attitudes and some 

of the influencing factors that have been recognized by the academic community. 

 

3. Data, Variables and Research Methods 

3.1 Data 

The data for this study were obtained from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) 2020, a nationwide, 

large-scale, multidisciplinary social tracking survey conducted by the China Social Science Survey 

Center (ISSS) of Peking University, which aims to reflect social, economic, demographic, educational, 

and health changes in China by tracking and collecting data at the individual, household, and 

community levels. The CFPS sample covers 25 provinces/municipalities/autonomous regions, with a 

target sample size of 16,000 households, and all household members in the sample are included. Based 

on the dependent variable “attitude toward income disparity” and independent variables (gender 

ideology, education level, social status, household registration system, and other variables), we found 

the answers to the questions related to “economic prosperity requires widening income disparity” in the 



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questionnaire, deleted invalid samples and samples without gender ideology scores, and after screening 

this paper The number of valid samples is 6917. 

3.2 Measurement of Public Income Level Gap Attitudes for the Dependent Variable 

General Secretary of the Central Committee Xi Jinping pointed out in his article “Solidly Promoting 

common prosperity” in 2021 that we should study in depth the goals of different stages and promote 

common prosperity in phases: by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the gap between residents’ income 

and actual consumption levels will be gradually reduced. By 2035, basic public services will be 

equalized. By the middle of this century, the gap between the income of the people and the actual 

consumption level will be narrowed to a reasonable range. Jiang Zemin has also put forward a realistic 

vision of how to share the fruits of development in the primary stage of socialism: Correctly handle the 

relationship between primary and secondary distribution, generally raising the income level of the 

residents on the basis of economic development, and gradually form a society in which the 

high-income and low-income groups are in the minority and the middle-income group is in the majority 

The distribution pattern of “small at both ends and large in the middle” will enable people to share the 

fruits of economic prosperity. From this, we can see that, firstly, the promotion of common prosperity is 

divided into three steps, each of which involves the reduction of the gap in income levels. Second, the 

goal of common prosperity is that people share the fruits of economic prosperity. In general, common 

prosperity requires economic prosperity and a reduction of income level disparity in parallel. 

Thus, this study operationalizes the public’s attitude toward common prosperity as the public’s attitude 

of “How much do you agree with the statement that income disparity should be widened in order for 

the economy to prosper?”, primarily based on the responses to this question in the 2020 China Family 

Panel Studies (CFPS) questionnaires. The specific variable manipulation process is shown in Table 1. 

3.3 Control Variables 

The previous section operationalized the public’s response to the common prosperity policy as to how 

much they agree with the statement that income disparity should be widened for economic prosperity. 

According to the existing studies’ attitudes toward income level disparity, the independent variables are 

divided into four main categories: individual circumstances, life status, social values, and media use. 

The individual situation includes gender, age, education (Fan, 2006; Rodríguez-Pose et al., 2009), class 

(Kakwani et al., 2022), and financial literacy (Lykke, Lykke, N. (2020). Transversal Dialogues on 

Intersectionality, Socialist Feminism and Epistemologies of Ignorance. NORA - Nordic Journal of 

Feminist and Gender Research, 28(3), 197-210. ); life status includes employment status, marital status, 

family status (including how many people in the family and family income), local residence time, 

household registration type, and political identity0, social values include a sense of social fairness, 

sense of social conflict, and perception of income disparity; and media use including media type, and 

media use duration 错误!未找到引用源。 (Hu et al., 2015). 

 

 



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Table 1. Question and Assignment of Variables 

Variables Question Assignment 

Dependent 

variable 
  

Income gap 

attitudes 

To what extent do you agree with the 

statement “income disparity should 

be widened for economic 

prosperity”? We have four options: 

strongly disagree, disagree, agree, 

strongly agree. 

Strongly disagree = 1, disagree = 2, agree 

= 3, strongly agree = 4 

Independent 

variable 
  

Age Date of birth (year) 
Since the data is for 2020, age = 2020 - 

date of birth (year) 

Gender Respondents’ gender Female = 0, Male = 1 

Household 

registration type 

Your current household registration 

status is: 1. agricultural household 

registration 3. non-agricultural 

household registration 5. no 

household registration 7. resident 

household registration 79. not 

applicable 

Set 5, 7, 79 as dummy variables via 

spss24, set agricultural household 

registration= 1, non-agricultural 

household registration = 2 

Education level 
What is the highest degree you have 

completed (graduated)? 

0=never attended school, 

1=illiterate/semi-literate, 3=elementary 

school, 4=junior high school, 5=high 

school/junior college/technical 

school/vocational high school, 6=junior 

college, 7=undergraduate college, 

8=master degree, 9=doctor 

Social class 

Occupation code for most current 

work/most recently completed work 

(broad category) 

3 = basic class (including commercial and 

service employees, industrial workers, 

agricultural laborers and the jobless, 

unemployed and semi-unemployed in 

urban and rural areas); 2 = middle 



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position class (including professionals and 

technicians, clerical workers, 

self-employed businessmen); 1 = 

dominant position class (including state 

and social managers, managers, private 

business owners) 

Gender ideology 

Fathers should invest as much as 

mothers in caring for their children; 

2. The man goes out to work while 

the woman looks after the house; 3. 

A woman who marries well is better 

than a man who works well; 4. 

Women should have children to be 

complete; 5. Men should take up half 

of the housework. (1 means strongly 

disagree, 2 means disagree, 3 means 

be insensible of it, 4 means agree, 5 

means strongly agree. Please choose 

a number between 1 and 5 to indicate 

your agreement with the following 

statements). 

Question 1 and Question 5 are reversed 

from the other questions, so the gender 

ideology score = Q1+Q5-Q2-Q3-Q4, the 

higher the score the less modern the 

gender ideology 

 

Since the main purpose of this study is to explore the impact of gender ideology on the public’s 

response to common prosperity policy, the variables generally recognized by the academic community 

are classified as demographic factors, social structure factors, and cultural factors, and put into Model 1 

as control variables. Specifically, demographic factors (age and gender), social structure factors (social 

class and household registration type), and cultural factors (education level). For age and gender, the 

original values in the data were used for analysis in this study. For “education level” and “household 

registration type”, SPSS24 is used to convert the data of “highest education level”, “household 

registration type” and “occupation code”, to realize the operation of “education level”, “household 

registration type” and “social class”. It should be pointed out that this study operationalizes “social 

class” based on occupational classification, and the specific operation process is shown in Table 1. 

3.4 Gender Ideology Variables 

Some researchers suggested that gender ideology is the gender-role concept. Other researchers 

declaimed that gender role ideology is the most important component of gender ideology, based on 

which people design their role models in family and social life (Chunling, 1996). Gender ideology is an 

abstract concept. It is people’s attitude and view towards the social norms and the division of social 



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roles related to gender, and it is also one of the important indicators to reflect the degree of gender 

equality in society. Simply put, gender ideology is an individual’s identity and social identification with 

gender roles (Wenhong, 2020). 

Socialist feminism, influenced by Marxist feminism, sees the unfair treatment of women in the labor 

market as an example of all those who are unfairly treated in the labor market. The central connection 

between this perspective and this study is that the gender income gap is closely related to the general 

income gap, or the urban-rural gap, and that gender ideology is not only about an individual’s sense of 

gender equality but also affects other aspects of an individual’s sense of equality. One of the purposes 

of this study is to explore the heterogeneity of public attitude towards the income level gap brought 

about by gender ideology, which will be introduced as an independent variable in this section, and the 

second purpose is to conduct a mediating effect analysis of gender ideology with a socialist feminist 

perspective, which will be introduced as a mediating variable in this section. 

The key variable “gender ideology” was measured by respondents’ answers to the five related questions 

shown in Table 1, and due to incomplete answers for the gender ideology-related question set for the 

sample under 18 years of age, only individuals over the age of 18 were studied in this study. Among the 

five existing questions, the two components of gender division of labor awareness and gender 

dominance awareness (Wenhong Zhang, 2020) and the two indicators of “The man goes out to work 

while the woman looks after the house.” 0 and “for women marrying well is more important than doing 

well” proposed in the existing studies are included (Xu Qi, 2016). The specific operationalization 

process is shown in Table 1. 

3. Research Methodology and Framework 

The hypothesis of this study focuses on “Do differences in gender ideology lead to differences in 

income level gap attitudes?” and “Do gender ideology mediate the effect of other influences on 

differences in income level gap attitudes?” These two questions are developed. Therefore, to address 

hypothesis one, this paper uses multiple linear regression to first put the control variables into the 

model to obtain model 1, and then put gender ideology into the model to obtain model 2, and observe 

the changes of each figure in the two models before and after. Aiming at hypothesis two, this paper 

applied Bootstrap method model 4 and according to the analysis framework in Figure 1 to analyze the 

variables that changed significantly after the gender ideology was added as a mediating variable, so as 

to observe whether the mediating effect was significant, and to know the mediating effect size by 

calculating the path effect size before and after variables. 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Figure 1. Analysis Framework 

 

Taking gender ideology as a mediating variable, this paper analyzes the mediating effect between the 

widely recognized influencing factors and the public’s attitude towards common prosperity policy. In 

this paper, the four independent variables of age, gender, education level and social status will enter X 

position in the model as shown in the figure, and the Bootstrap method will be used to analyze them 

respectively. 

 

4. Results 

4.1 Describe the Results of Statistical Analysis 

Table 2 presents the descriptive statistical analysis of the control, independent and dependent variables. 

The statistical results in Table 2 show that the public’s attitude toward income disparity scored 2.51, 

which is slightly higher than the median value (2.50). The higher the score, the more negative the 

public’s attitude toward closing the income gap, and thus the negative response to the policy. Indicating 

that, in general, the public has a neutral attitude toward the idea of “narrowing the income gap” and 

slightly disagrees with the idea of “narrowing the income level gap”. Therefore, the heterogeneity of 

public attitudes toward narrowing the income gap should be taken into account in order to make public 

attitudes shift toward positive agreement, respond to the call for common prosperity policy, and help 

narrow the income gap. 

 

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics of Variables 

Variables Average  Std Description 

Age 44.28 19.45 maximum value = 104, minimum value = 9 

Gender 0.51 0.5 Female = 0, Male = 1 

Household 

registration type 
1.18 0.383 agricultural household = 1, non-agricultural household = 2 

Education level 4.27 1.847 

Illiterate/semi-literate = 0, Nursery = 1, Kindergarten = 2,  

Elementary = 3, Junior High = 4,  

High School/High School/High School = 5, College = 6,  

M: Gender Ideology 

X: Independent variable 

() 

Y: Income gap attitude 



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Undergraduate = 7, Master = 8, Doctorate = 9 

Marital status 1.84 0.366 unmarried = 1, married = 2 

Social class 2.72 0.564 Advantageous class=1, middle position class=2, basic class=3 

Income gap 

attitudes 
2.51 0.638 

The higher the score from 1 to 4, the less positive the attitude towards 

“closing the income gap”. 

Gender 

ideology 
-0.473 0.6546 

maximum value = 1.4, minimum value = -2.6; the lower the score, the 

more modern the gender ideology. The more modern the gender 

ideology, the more it supports gender equality. 

 

4.2 Multiple Linear Regression Results 

The results of the multiple linear regression data analysis in Table 3 show that gender ideology plays a 

significant influence on income level gap attitudes, and the inclusion of the gender ideology variable 

has an impact on the significance of other factors. Therefore, the variable of gender ideology is 

significant for the heterogeneity of public attitude towards income level disparity. 

Specifically, Model 1 shows that the three variables of gender, education level, and social class have a 

significant impact on the public’s attitude toward income disparity, with the lower the education level 

and the more basic the social class, the more positive the attitude toward “narrowing the income gap” is. 

Compared with men, women’s attitude toward “closing the income gap” is more positive. In Model 2, 

the effect of gender ideology on the income gap is significant, and the more modern the gender 

ideology, the more positive the attitude toward “narrowing the income gap” is.  

As stated in the previous section on the socialist feminist perspective, individuals with a modern gender 

perspective have a stronger sense of gender equality, and this sense of equality is reflected in all aspects 

of their lives. 

 

Table 3. Multiple Linear Regression Models of Income Gap Attitudes 

 Model 1 Model 2 

 B Beta B Beta 

(Constant) 2.929
***

  2.901
***

  

Age -0.002 -0.024 -0.004
***

 -0.044 

Gender -0.040
**

 -0.033 -0.073
***

 -0.060 

Household registration type -0.013 -0.008 -0.007 -0.005 

Education level -0.099
***

 -0.248 -0.084
***

 -0.210 

Marital status 0.029 0.020 0.011 0.008 

Social class 0.033
**

 0.033 0.027
*
 0.027 



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Gender ideology   -0.139
***

 -0.152 

Adj: R_sqr  0.069  0.088 

F  0.000  0.000 

N  6916  6916 

∗ p<0.05, ∗∗ p<0.01, ∗∗∗ p <0.001. 

 

In addition, the R-squared changes from 0.069 to 0.088 with the inclusion of the gender ideology 

variable, and the absolute value of the standardized coefficient of the gender ideology variable is 

second only to education level, which shows that the contribution of gender ideology to the explanation 

of public attitude towards income disparity is high in this model. It is worth noting that the variable of 

age changes from insignificant (p ≥ 0.05) to highly significant (p < 0.001) with the inclusion of gender 

ideology, while the significance of gender and social class decreases and the significance of education 

level remains unchanged, but the standardized coefficient decreases. Thus, in the next section, this 

study further develops the data analysis around the test of the mediating effect of gender ideology. 

4.3 Analysis of the Mediating Effect of Gender Ideology 

From the data analysis and discussion in Table 3, it is known that gender ideology plays an influence on 

the effect of age, gender, education level, and social class on income gap attitudes, and to test 

hypothesis two, and then determine how much gender ideology play a mediating role in it, the 

mediating effect is tested below through Bootstrap method model 4 (Zhonglin et al., 2014), which is 

done as follows. 

 

Table 4. Test of the Mediating Effect of Gender Ideology on the Income Gap 

 Paths 
Amount of 

effect (E)1 

Confidence 

Interval (CI)2 

Model 3 (p<0.10) ab/-c=85.71%   

No mediating variables  age→ income gap attitude (3A) -0.0021(a) (-0.0039,-0.0003) 

Put in mediating variables age → income gap attitude (3B) -0.0039(b) (-0.0060,-0.0017) 

Put in mediating variables 
age → gender ideology → income gap 

attitude (3C) 
0.0018(c) (0.0014,0.0022) 

Model 4 (p<0.05)    

No mediating variables age→ income gap attitude (4A) -0.0021(a) (-0.0042,0.0000) 

Put in mediating variables age → income gap attitude (4B) -0.0039(b) (-0.0060,-0.0017) 

Put in mediating variables 
age → gender ideology → income gap 

attitude (4C) 
0.0018(c) (0.0014,0.0022) 

Model 5 (p<0.05) ab/-c=80.20%   

No mediating variables gender → income gap attitude 5A -0.0404(a) (-0.0683,-0.0125) 



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Put in mediating variables gender → income gap attitude (5B) -0.0728(b) (-0.1009,-0.0448) 

Put in mediating variables 
gender → gender ideology → Income gap 

attitude (5C) 
0.0324(c) (0.0263,0.0392) 

Model 6 (p<0.05) ab/c=15.5%   

No mediating variables education level → income gap attitude (6A) -0.0990(a) (-0.1100,-0.0880) 

Put in mediating variables education level → income gap attitude (6B) -0.0838(b) (-0.0949,-0.0726) 

Put in mediating variables 
education level → gender ideology → income 

gap attitude (6C) 
-0.1530(c) (-0.0184,-0.0123) 

Model 7 (p<0.05) ab/c=19.88%   

No mediating variables social class → income gap attitude (7A) 0.0332(a) (0.0078,0.0544) 

Put in mediating variables social class → income gap attitude (7B) 0.0266(b) (0.0015,0.0517) 

Put in mediating variables 
social class → gender ideology → Income 

gap attitude (7C) 
0.0066(c) (0.0029,0.0105) 

1 The absence of 0 in the Confidence Interval indicates that the mediation effect is significant. 

2 If the total effect and the mediating effect have the same sign, it indicates that they play an 

intermediary role, while different signs indicate that they play a masking role. 

 

The four variables of age, gender, education, and social class are placed in the independent variables in 

the analysis framework of Figure 1, and the effect sizes of the different paths before and after the 

mediating variables are calculated through the Process v3.4 plug-in of SPSS24.0 to obtain the four 

models shown in Table 4 (Models 4-7), and since the significance level of the effect of age on income 

disparity attitudes before the mediating variables is only p < 0.01, so the confidence interval was set to 

90% to obtain model 3.  

The results of the data analysis in Table 4 show that gender ideology plays a masking role in the effect 

of age and gender on income gap attitudes and a mediating role in the effect of education level and 

social class on income gap attitudes. 

It is important to first point out the relationship between model 3 and model 4. Since the significance of 

the effect of age on income gap attitudes before the introduction of the gender concept only reached a 

significant level of p < 0.01, the operation was set to a confidence interval set at 90% to obtain model 3 

and a confidence interval set at 95% to obtain model 4. It is known from the study of Zhonglin et al. 

(2022) that path 4A is not significant when the confidence interval is set at 95% (confidence interval 

containing 0 is identified as The confidence interval is set at 90% for path 3A, path 3B and path 3C, and 

the sign of the effect of path 3A, 3B, and path 3C is opposite, so the masking effect should be used to 

draw a conclusion. It follows that gender ideology plays a masking effect in the effect of age on income 

disparity regardless of whether the confidence interval is 90% or 95%. All paths of the models are 

significant, the confidence interval does not contain 0) except for model 4. The situation in model 5 is 

similar to the previous case, where path 5C has the opposite sign of the effect size as path 5A and path 4B, 



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so gender ideology also plays a masking effect in gender and income gap attitudes. This suggests that 

controlling for the gender ideology variable significantly widens the differences in attitude towards 

closing the income gap across age and gender. 

Model 6 is consistent with model 7, all paths are significant, therefore, the mediation effect is 

established, from the results of data analysis, it can be obtained that gender ideology plays a mediating 

role in the influence of two variables, education and social class, on the income gap attitude, and the 

size of the mediating effect is obtained by the effect size calculation formula: E=ab/c, E6=15.5%, and 

E7=19.88% respectively. 

In conclusion, gender ideology plays a masking effect in the effect of age and gender variables on 

income gap attitudes, and a mediating effect in the effect of education level and social class on income 

gap attitudes, with mediating effects of 15.5% (education level) and 19.88% (social class), respectively, 

thus, hypothesis 2 is supported. 

 

5. Results and Discussion 

This paper first uses multiple linear regression to demonstrate that gender ideology has a significant 

effect on public attitude towards closing the income gap and that the more modern the gender ideology 

is, the more positive individuals’ attitudes towards closing the income gap. The Bootstrap method was 

then used to demonstrate the mediating and masking effects of gender ideology on some important 

variables of public attitude, towards closing the income gap. Socialist feminism believes that the idea 

of gender inequality in gender ideology originates and can be reflected in all aspects, and income 

inequality is one of them. This study uses CFPS data for analysis to provide evidence from China for 

socialist feminist perspective. The results of the data analysis demonstrate that the degree of 

modernization of the Chinese public’s gender consciousness affects their attitudes toward eliminating 

income inequality and, in turn, the response to the common prosperity policy. 

This study first fills part of the gap in the response to the common prosperity policy by analyzing the 

heterogeneity of public attitude towards closing the income level gap through the introduction of 

gender ideology as a variable, using socialist feminism as a lens. The study found that the more 

supportive individuals were of gender equality, the more responsive they were to the common 

prosperity policy. Second, it is inspired by Du Ping (2020) to explore the mediating effect of gender 

ideology as a mediating variable. It is found that gender ideology not only directly influences the 

public’s response to the common prosperity policy, but also plays a significant mediating role in the 

effects of age, gender, education level, and social status (divide by occupation) on public response. 

Therefore, it can be seen that the gender ideology of citizens plays an important role in the public’s 

attitude to the common prosperity policy, whether directly or as an intermediary variable, which has a 

significant impact on it. 

It should be noted that there are still shortcomings in this study, firstly, the questionnaire used did not 

have a sample of questions related to gender ideology under the age of 16, and it is also worth paying 



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attention to whether the gender ideology of adolescents, who carry the future hopes of the country, is 

modernized. Secondly, this study only tested the mediating effect of gender ideology on four variables, 

and there are numerous other variables that deserve to be tested for mediating effects. In conclusion, 

this study is only a preliminary exploration of the empirical study of gender ideology and response to 

the common prosperity policy. There are fewer studies on public attitudes toward the common 

prosperity policy, and future research could be deeper in this area. In addition, income inequality is 

only one of many inequalities, for example, ecofeminism believes that the exploitation of nature by 

man comes from the exploitation of humans by humans, so the influence of gender equality awareness 

should be considered in many aspects of inequality in the future. 

 

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Notes 

Note 1. The household registration system refers to a basic state administrative system. In Chinese 

history, the household registration system is directly related to land and takes family, clan and clan as 

the standard of population management. The modern household registration system is a legal system 

for the state to collect, confirm and register citizens’ birth, death, kinship, legal address and other basic 

information of the population. The urban-rural household registration system is a unique urban-rural 

dual household registration system in China. The household registration system of the People’s 

Republic of China is the population management policy implemented by the People’s Republic of 



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China. The household registration indicates the legality of the natural person living in the local area. 

China’s population management has long been based on this system. The People’s Republic of China’s 

household registration system, which divides the population according to geography and family 

affiliation, divides the household registration into agricultural and non-agricultural to control migration, 

which has been widely disputed and criticized. The household registration system is a system with 

so-called “Chinese characteristics”. The People’s Republic of China is the only country in the world 

with a strict household registration system. It is known that there are still two countries in the world, 

North Korea and Benin, that have learned from China’s household registration system, but these two 

countries have not drawn differences between farmers and workers. In recent years, China is phasing 

out the dual nature of agricultural household registration and non-agricultural household registration to 

achieve equality of citizenship. However, for the samples involved in this study, the household 

registration system can be used as a reference standard for their birthplace to some extent. 

Note 2. At present, there is no direct evidence that media usage time will affect the attitude towards 

common prosperity policy, but media use time will affect the individual’s social values, and the 

individual’s attitude towards common prosperity policy is a part of social values. Therefore, media use 

time is taken as the control variable in this study, and future studies can also be conducted on media 

use. 

Note 3. This is a traditional Chinese proverb that embodies the traditional Chinese gender ideology. It 

means that men are responsible for earning money outside the home and women are responsible for 

taking care of children and doing housework at home. Generally speaking, it means that men are 

mainly responsible for making money and socializing outside. Women are mainly responsible for 

maintaining the family, such as children, parents, housework and so on. This situation largely stems 

from the idea that women are inferior to men. But as women enter the workforce, that no longer holds 

true today. 

 

 

 


