Advances in Politics and Economics ISSN 2576-1382 (Print) ISSN 2576-1390 (Online) Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape 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 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 82 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 83 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 84 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 85 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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). www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 86 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 87 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 88 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 89 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 90 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 91 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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) www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 92 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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, www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 93 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 94 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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. 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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 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2023 97 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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.