Do Highbrow Cultural Activities Foster Egalitarian Gender Role Attitudes?

Highbrow cultural participation has been a popular concept in sociology and education research. In recent research, it has been linked to values and attitudes, but its impact on gender role attitudes remains unclear. We assume that highbrow cultural participation affects gender role attitudes through the values materialized in the art itself as well as its social composition. Our hypothesis is that highbrow cultural participation leads to more egalitarian gender role attitudes. Further, we explore potential moderations by gender and social origin. Using longitudinal data from the German National Educational Panel Study (N = 9,846), we estimate the Average Treatment Effect of cultural participation on gender role attitudes in 25-year-olds. Regressions were weighted with weights generated from entropy balancing to strengthen causal identification. Highbrow cultural participation significantly increases egalitarian gender role attitudes. However, no statistically significant moderation by gender or social origin was observed. Our results highlight the importance of leisure-time activities for socialization beyond family background and formal education. Policies expanding access to highbrow culture could help foster gender equality.