Investigating the relationship between gender equality and citizen trust: Evidence from Latin America

Abstract

ObjectivesPrevious research has shown a relationship between social and economic equality and trust, but the relationship between gender equality and trust has received relatively little attention. This study addresses that lacuna and analyzes the relationship between gender equality and political trust as well as social trust.MethodsUsing the 2015 Latinobarómetro, we test the relationship between two types of gender equality, labor gender equality and overall gender equality, and two types of trust, political trust and social trust in a series of regressions.ResultsThe results show that gender equality is positively associated with social and political trust. In particular, the magnitude of association of labor gender equality with social trust is greater than that of overall gender equality. Also, the magnitude of association of overall gender equality with political trust is greater than that of labor gender equality.ConclusionsOur article contributes to the literature by demonstrating that overall gender equality and labor gender equality have varying association with trust depending on types of trust.