Gender and Modernity: Cultural Consumption of Men and Women in Croatia

Based on primary data from a 2018 nationally representative survey (GENMOD, HRZZ 6010), the paper presents and discusses the differences in cultural consumption between men and women in Croatia. While gender is a routine control variable in consumption-based studies of social inequality, the theoretical framework of our research also included inputs from modernization theories developed since the mid-1980s. However, it does not address the field of consumption solely from the perspective of individualization but also from that of the transformation of gender relations in the current ‘mode of modernization’ (Touraine, 2007) of the researched social context. The results of regression analysis indicate that gender, education, age and residential status are important predictors of cultural consumption. Women are more avid consumers of culture, especially in the domain of highbrow culture. Differences between men and women in heterogeneity and homogeneity of cultural consumption were also noted. Likewise, the analysis of taste in music indicates that there are gender differences with respect to the global-local divide, highly important in the context of legitimation struggles in post-socialist South East Europe (Cvetičanin and Popescu, 2011). Our analysis suggests that cultural universes of men and women of same educational attainment are drifting apart, which can be interpreted as an outcome of non-linear (partly ‘regressive’) modernization in the post-socialist period.