Will Feminism Affect the Chinese Public's Perception of Government Authority?

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Abstract

For Chinese citizens, what is the relationship between individualism, feminism and the perception of the authority of the government? This paper discusses this problem through the way of empirical research. Generally speaking, scholars have mostly studied these concepts from the perspective of political philosophy. The contribution of this paper is to transform these abstract political concepts into empirically measurable concepts, and to analyze the Chinese public's perceptions of individualism, feminism and the authority of the government from the perspective of feminism.
In theory, individualism is the basis of liberalism, and one of the goals of classical liberalism is to limit the power of government and narrow the scope of government. On this basis, this paper adds a feminist perspective, trying to analyze the relationship and influence between feminism, individualism and government authority. Therefore, this paper puts forward three theoretical hypotheses to verify: 1) The more individualistic values an individual has, the more they will accept feminism; 2) The more individualistic the individual values, the more likely they are to support the reduction of government power; 3) The more they support feminism, the more they demand a reduction in government power. These theoretical assumptions are based only on Chinese public perceptions.
The empirical data in this paper are from the China part of the latest World Values Survey database, namely wave seventh (2017-2022) data, and the research method is structural equation model. Specifically, since individualism, feminism and government authority are abstract concepts that cannot be known through direct observation, these three are taken as latent variables and relevant explicit variables are selected to explain them. The latent variables in this paper are individualism, feminism and government authority, and gender is added as an independent variable. The explicit variables used are from the questions in the seventh World Values Survey, and the explicit variables of the three are selected and classified respectively.
Through data analysis, there are two correlation chains in this model, one is the impact of individualism and gender on feminism, and the other is the impact of individualism and feminism on government authority. The results of the current data show that hypothesis 1 is valid: the more individualistic values an individual has, the more they will support feminism. Hypothesis two and three are not valid. In hypothesis 2, the author believes that "the more individualistic values individuals have, the more they will support the reduction of government power", but the data reflect the opposite situation: the more individualistic values individuals have, the more they hope the government will implement the function of social management and expand the government's welfare in social management and social welfare distribution. In hypothesis 3, the author believes that "the more individuals support feminism, the more they will demand to reduce government power", but the data results are completely opposite, the more individuals support feminism, the more they will demand to increase the function of government in managing society.
The discrepancy between the conclusions drawn from the data analysis and the authors' assumptions suggests that the elaboration of concepts in political science should continue to be strengthened. At the same time, it also shows that the Chinese public needs a more scientific cognition of feminism.

Author

• Yanru Yang, China University of Political Science and Law