Gender Asymmetries and Son Preference across Birth Cohorts of Women: A Study of Parity Transitions in Kyrgyzstan

Konstantin Kazenin , Stockholm University
Vladimir Kozlov, Nazarbayev University

We focus on social conditions of son preference, which shapes fertility behavior in many developing countries. It is commonly assumed that son preference is expected in families with high level of gender asymmetries between spouses, which makes ‘value’ of sons higher. However, for some Asian countries it has been argued that there risks of transition to some parities are higher for women which had no son before, irrespective of characteristics of gender relations in woman’s family (proxied by age and educational gap between spouses, wife’s labor experience, etc.). This supports the view that son preference is mainly conditioned by gender asymmetries at the society level, such as patrilineality and patrilocality norms. If this view is correct, it is expected that son preference remains stable across birth cohorts of women even if younger cohorts experience higher gender equity in their families, if only at the society level gender asymmetries persist. We show that this expectation is born out for Kyrgyzstan (Central Asia). Using several surveys, we argue that women of younger cohorts enjoy more ‘modernized’ gender relations in their families. However, for all the cohorts propensity to transitions to the 3rd and 4th parities is higher for women with no sons. This confirms that son preference can shape fertility behavior in a society with strong tendencies towards patrilocality and patrilineality irrespective of degree of gender equity in woman’s family. A goal for further research is comparison of relative ‘weight’ of family-level and society-level gender asymmetries for son preference in other countries.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe