Seminar: What Causes Gender Inequality?

The Topics

I. Introduction.  What do we mean by gender inequality?

To analyze the causes of gender inequality, we need to know what we mean by gender inequality.  How can we conceive of and talk about gender inequality in ways that are general enough to apply across the range of relevant phenomena, consistent enough to minimize conceptual ambiguities, and precise enough to be analytically effective?  Gender inequality has been extraordinarily diverse and wide spread.  Women and men are unequal in every conceivable way in endless circumstances, both immediate and enduring, by both objective criteria and subjective experience.   So, what counts as gender inequality? Can we characterize it in ways that let us confidently and impartially assess when there is more or less of it?

• Analytical Task
  • No task for the introductory meeting.
• Common Readings
  • Down So Long:  Why Is It So Hard to Explain Gender Inequality? 
• Recommended Readings
  
  • Chafetz, Janet Saltzman. "Feminist Theory and Sociology: Underutilized Contributions for Mainstream Theory." Annual Review of Sociology 23, no. 1 (1997): 97-120. [doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.23.1.97]; or Chafetz, Janet Saltzman. "The Varieties of Gender Theory in Sociology." In Handbook of the Sociology of Gender, edited by Janet Saltzman Chafetz, 3-23. Boston, MA: Springer US, 2006. [doi:10.1007/0-387-36218-5_1]
  • Rosenfeld, Rachel A. "What Do We Learn About Difference from the Scholarship on Gender?." Social Forces 81, no. 1 (2002): 1-24. [doi:10.1353/sof.2002.0057]
  • Destined for Equality: Egalitarian Impulse
• Related Readings
  • ...
  • ...

II. Causality - What are causes, mechanisms, and the like?

We casually refer to causes and effects in normal interactions all the time.  We all conduct our lives – choosing actions, making decisions, trying to influence others – based on theories about why and how things happen in the world.  From the early stages of childhood we attribute causes, building a vision of the social (and physical) world that makes it understandable.  Every action, every choice about what to do, is based on our anticipation of its effects, our understandings of consequences.  Analytical and scientific reasoning has a similar form, but requires that we approach causation more systematically and self-consciously.

• Analytical Task
  • The general analytical problem.  In this and other societies, women and men commonly dress differently.  Prepare a causal analysis that seeks to explain why women and men dress differently.
    • Our analytical task this week is to attempt a "simple" causal analysis of a gender difference that is obvious but not often questioned - the way we dress.  The purpose of this exercise is to get us thinking about causality. 
    • To the degree that we can, we want to try to think of different kinds of causes based on varied ways of framing the causal question.  Realistically, one could easily write a book about all the possible ways of interpreting this causal question and answering it.  We are just trying to develop some sensible insights in a couple pages. 
  • Thinking Tools.  The starting point of most causal analyses is a comparison.  When we start with the general question "what causes X?" we turn it into possible comparisons to produce an answer.  Examples of such questions might be "why do people in group A do X more than those in group B?," "why does X occur more often in summer than winter?," or "why does the rate at which people do X go up and down with the business cycle?" 

    The underlying idea is simple but powerful.  If we are trying to explain some phenomenon, X, then we need to identify variations in the likelihood of X or the rate of X, and look for potential causes that (1) vary across the relevant circumstances in a way that could explain X and (2) that we can connect to the outcomes for X in some way.  For example, with the gender distinctive clothing question, some ways to better specify the question and look at it through comparisons are:

    • What causes individual conformity to the cultural pattern?  What induces women and men to conform to the expectations for dressing differently?  Whenever we observe a consistent pattern of social behavior, some common conditions or processes must be inducing people to act in a similar way.  Figuring out what encourages conformity and discourages deviance allows us to provide a causal explanation.  Think about what happens to people who do not conform to the expectations about male and female appropriate clothing.  And, just as important, ask why it is that people punish nonconformists.  Here the basic comparison is between people who conform and those who do not, or between the reactions of people to conformity and nonconformity.
    • What causes differences in dress "codes" across cultures? What circumstances could exist across societies that consistently produce gender differences in modes of dress?  The clothing characteristic of each sex varies greatly across societies (and time).  Clothing differs between "primitive" cultures and modern ones, between warm and cold climates, and between different parts of the world.  But seemingly everywhere men and women dress differently.  How can we explain this pattern?  Here the primary comparison is between cultures that have different clothing.
    • Why do the expectations about clothing differences vary by context?  Why are gender differences in dress greater in some circumstances than in others?  For example, both women and men may wear similar coveralls in a factory, but women and men generally wear dramatically different clothing to formal dances.  Our efforts to find causes behind any phenomena are improved by looking at variations.  If male and female clothing is just a little different in some contexts but greatly different in others, we can usefully focus on what might produce this variance in gender differences.  Here the primary comparison is between contexts with greater differences in the expected clothing and contexts with lesser differences.
  • Thinking Tools 2.  While considering how to explain the differences in the ways women and men dress, it can also be helpful to think through ways that this pattern could be considered an example of a larger pattern.  The explanation for the broader pattern may be different or easier to develop. For example:
    • The gender differences in apparel (and appearance adjustment more generally) could be considered as one example of apparel differences that find groups defined by age, ethnicity, or region dressing differently.  That is to say, it is not only women and men who consistently dress differently.  Different ways of dressing also distinguish other groups.  If we think about those other groups, does it give us insights into explaining the difference between women's and men's clothing?
    • The gender differences in dress could be considered as one example of a wider range of behavioral differences between women and men such as rules of proper decorum, speech patterns, or displays of sexuality.  That is, we can point to other presentational differences between women and men.  If we think about the range of these presentational differences, do they suggest ideas that might help explain differences in apparel?
• Common Readings:
  • Maggetti, Martino, Fabrizio Gilardi, and Claudio M. Radaelli. Designing Research in the Social Sciences. London, 2013. {Read Chs. 1-3; Glance at rest which can be valuable} [doi:10.4135/9781473957664]
  • Gerring, John. "Causation: A Unified Framework for the Social Sciences." Journal of Theoretical Politics 17, no. 2 (2005): 163-98. [doi:10.1177/0951629805050859]
  • Epstein, Joshua M. " Why Model?." Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 11, no. 4 (2008): 12. [Generic Link]
• Recommended Readings
  
  • Wikipedia. "Causality"
  • Little, Daniel. 1991. Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Pp. 1-87   
  • Richard Hamming, "You and Your Research", Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar (7 March 1986)
• Related Readings
  
  •   Andrew Abbott.  "The Causal Devolution." Sociological Methods & Research November 1998 27: 148-181.
  • Ernest Nagel.   1960. "Determinism in History."   Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 20:3:291-317. 
  • Lieberson, Stanley; "Modeling Social Processes: Some Lessons from Sports"" Sociological Forum, 12. March 1997:11-35.

III.  How is gender inequality symbolized and reproduced in everyday life?

To start our investigation of the causes of gender inequality, we will consider how people experience and act out gender in their day to day lives.  We want to think about the most basic questions.  Why and when do women and men act differently?  Why and when do people respond differently to women than men?  How do all these private individual actions when taken together over time influence the understanding of gender in a culture and gender inequality?

• Analytical Task
  • The general analytical problem.  Using a typical setting where women and men meet, assess how Ridgeway's framing approach helps explain the role of gender in these interactions and where it might fall short.
    • For this task, we choose some familiar (to us) setting or type of interaction where women and men typically engage each other.  For example, this could be a workplace, a bar, interactions between buyers and sellers, or parties.  We use this as our source of empirical data and focus our argument on explaining gender interactions there.
    • First, we need to read Ridgeway's argument carefully.  Then we try to apply her argument to the setting we have chosen.  We want to assess how much we believe people's actions (in the context we chose) fit the expectations we can derive from her argument and when they might not.  As we work on our analyses, we are evaluating Ridgeway's approach as a tool. The right tool allows us to construct a better edifice with less effort; the wrong tool does not.
  • Thinking tools. The remaining notes for this analytical task look at some analytical steps that allow us to think through this problem effectively.
    • Systematic steps in the analysis.  Doing this kind of thought experiment, we want our thinking to be as systematic as possible.  For all systematic causal analyses, we want to consider how the phenomenon being examined varies in regular or predictable ways across conditions, settings, types of people, places, or the like. Then, we ask what conditions or events typically precede or occur along with the outcomes that could plausibly influence those outcomes.
      • For example, first, we simply consider possible differences between men's and women's actions. 
      • Then we consider how their actions might differ between opposite-sex and same-sex encounters. 
      • We can broaden the range of the examples we use to think about these differences by considering other characteristics that might affect interactions, such as the age or race of the people, whether the interaction is cordial or unfriendly, how well the people know each other, and so on. 
      • We want to ask ourselves if the gender aspect of the interaction will be influenced by these other circumstances that seem relevant to interactions. For example, does gender influence cordial interactions differently from the ways it influences confrontations in our setting? If we believe the answer is yes, then we consider how and why. 
      • Analogously, we want to think about the ways that people's goals in gendered interactions vary in these kinds of circumstances, and how these goals influence their actions.  For example, in the same setting, a person seeking sex will commonly act differently than someone trying to curry favor or sell a product.
      • When we apply a systematic logic to the analysis, we usually do not want to write about all the possibilities we think about.  Instead, we use the ones that we find telling.  But we will not identify those telling possibilities unless we systematically work through all the relevant possible influences.
    • Gender context. We can take the analysis of interactions another step by considering how the influence of gender on these interactions is potentially affected by conditions like:
      • the presence or absence of onlookers (i.e., the relative privacy of the interaction) or
      • the gender distribution of other people present (i.e., mostly male, mostly female, or mixed)
    • Conformity.  Whenever we try to explain patterns like this, we want to consider the exceptions.  When will people violate the implications of gender expectations and what follows when they do?  Are there circumstances that make it more likely people will depart from conventional behavior?  Violations of norms or common expectations are valuable for causal analyses because cracks in the veneer of social order can reveal its structure and dynamics.
  • Bring it together.  After working through the steps above, we try to assess when Ridgeway's approach does a good job explaining how gender influences behavior in our chosen setting, and when her approach seems to fall short.   Do we see ways that her approach neglects or misunderstands important causes influencing the gender character of behavior in the context we examine?  Our central goal here is to explain how and why gender organizes interactions in our chosen example. We are not attempting a general evaluation of Ridgeway's ideas, but a focused assessment of their effectiveness in the setting we have selected to try them out.
• Common Readings:
  • Cecilia L. Ridgeway, Framed by Gender, Chs. 1-2 {I recommend buying Ridgeway's book, but it is also available on line through the library via this link}; If any of Ridgeway's presentation seems unclear, try reading Ridgeway's article listed under the recommended readings for this week.
  • Hyde, J. S. (2005). The Gender Similarities Hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60, 581-592.
  • Rosabeth Moss Kanter.  "Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women"    American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 82, No. 5 (Mar., 1977), pp. 965-990
• Recommended Readings
  
  • Erving Goffman, "The Arrangement between the Sexes" Theory and Society, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 301-331 
  • Deniz Kandiyoti, "Bargaining with Patriarchy." Gender and Society," Vol. 2, No. 3 (Sep 1988), pp. 274-290
  • Cecilia L. Ridgeway, "Framed Before We Know It: How Gender Shapes Social Relations".  Gender & Society 2009 23:145-160   
  • Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman " Doing Gender" Gender & Society 1987 1: 125-151.
• Related Readings
  
  • Cecilia Ridgeway.  Framed by Gender.  Oxford: 2011.
  • ...

IV. Why have women apparently occupied a subordinate position in all societies?  And how does explaining the "origins" of gender inequality relate to explaining the "persistence" of gender inequality?

Although some scholars may question if women have been subordinate in all societies, all agree that men have been dominant in most societies although the degree of dominance varies greatly.  This raises the very tricky question, how do we explain the prevalence of male dominance?  This exceedingly elusive question continues to elude any answer that will evoke a consensus. 

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical Task Alternative 1: An analytical critique.  As most of us lack the substantive knowledge needed to develop even simple analyses of gender inequality's possible origins, we will explore the causal possibilities by responding to the arguments of people who are knowledgeable.
    • Please read the "Basics of Causal Descriptions" on a separate page for some simple, beginning ideas about describing a causal analysis.
    • Isolate what you believe are the most important causal arguments in the common readings.  Give a critical asisessment of their different approaches.  In doing this, try to pay attention to what it is that makes you find the causal arguments more or less persuasive.  The recommended and related readings provide a range of material that you can look at as you need to deepen and sharpen your arguments.
    • It can be helpful to look back at the material from Topic II, especially Gerring's list of criteria for causal arguments.
  • Analytical Task Alternative 2: A hypothetical scenario.  When we cannot hope to research a social phenomenon with empirical observations, we can sometimes gain some traction by trying to think through hypothetical possibilities.  Here is an example.
    • Assume that sometime in the near future we launch a rocket into space with a crew of 1,000.  This crew is evenly divided between women and men, the women and men have similar credentials and accomplishments, and the two sexes are about equally represented at each level of authority.  The crew members' cultural understandings are similar to those of college students today.
    • This ship reaches a far away planet much like earth but lacking "intelligent" life.  Unfortunately, the ship's engines have become unstable and the crew must abandon it. So they must start life on this new planet.  While they possess much advanced knowledge, they have no technology.  They must start from scratch, producing food, organizing themselves into a community, pairing off to reproduce, slowly building toward some kind of technological development over generations.  [Note: If the distant planet scenario seems unnerving, we could have the same effect by dropping a 1,000 people on a remote island that is isolated as a social experiment.]
    • Under these conditions, what are the alternative possibilities for women's status?  What might decide which alternative occurs?
• Common Readings
  • Down So Long:  Analyzing the Persistence of Gender Inequality: How to Think about the Origins
  • Joan N. Huber. "Reproductive Biology, Technology, and Gender Inequality: An Autobiographical Essay"  Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 34 (2008) : 1-13
  • Sharon Smith. "Engels and the Origin of Women's Oppression"  International Socialist Review Issue 2, Fall 1997
  • Rosemary L. Hopcroft. "Gender Inequality in Interaction - An Evolutionary Account." Social Forces  87.4 (2009): 1845-1871.
• Recommended Readings
  • Sapolsky, Robert.  "Testosterone rules" Discover. Chicago: Mar 1997. Vol. 18, Iss. 3; p. 44 
  • Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A Cross-Cultural Analysis Of The Behavior Of Women And Men: Implications For The Origins Of Sex Differences. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 699-727.
  • Evolutionary Psychology and similar approaches:  The debates over evolutionary psychology - in general and as applied to gender inequality - are very important but often difficult to follow and assess.  Here are some starting points for learning the basics.  Buller's supplies a sophisticated overview and critique of the most influential paradigm in evolutionary psychology (while supportive of the more general venture), Downes and Walter present guided views of the field, and other pieces provide further commentaries and some studies that explore key issues facing this approach.
    • Downes, Stephen M., "Evolutionary Psychology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 Edition)
    • Sven Walter, "Evolutionary Psychology," The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2009
    • Bolger, Diane. "Introduction." In A Companion to Gender Prehistory, edited by Diane Bolger, 1-19. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2012. [doi:10.1002/9781118294291.ch0]
    • Buller, David J. "Evolutionary Psychology: A Critique." In Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, edited by Elliott Sober. Cambridge, MA: A Bradford Book, 2006. [also, compare David Buller. "A Guided Tour of Evolutionary Psychology" (In A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. Eds. Marco Nani and Massimo Marraffa. "An official electronic publication of the Department of Philosophy of University of Rome" 2000.) Also by Buller see: "Evolutionary Psychology: The Emperor's New Paradigm," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (2005): 277-283 and for a full treatment his book Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books, 2005.]
    • Fausto-Sterling, Anne. "Beyond Difference: A Biologist's Perspective." Journal of Social Issues 53, no. 2 (2010): 233-58. [doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1997.tb02442.x]
    • Goodman, Madeleine J., P. Bion Griffin, Agnes A. Estioko-Griffin, and John S. Grove. "The Compatibility of Hunting and Mothering among the Agta Hunter-Gatherers of the Philippines." Sex Roles 12, no. 11-12 (1985): 1199-209. [doi:10.1007/bf00287829]
    • Rigby, Nichole, and Rob J. Kulathinal. "Genetic Architecture of Sexual Dimorphism in Humans." Journal of Cellular Physiology 230, no. 10 (Oct 2015): 2304-10. [doi:10.1002/jcp.24979]
    • Stulp, Gert, and Louise Barrett. "Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Height Variation." Biological Reviews 91, no. 1 (Feb 2016): 206-34. [doi:10.1111/brv.12165]
    • Joseph Henrich. "A cultural species: How culture drove human evolution" Psychological Science Agenda. Science Brief. 2009
    • Rosemary L. Hopcroft. "Gender Inequality in Interaction – An Evolutionary Account." Social Forces  87.4 (2009): 1845-1871.
  • Randall Collins. "A Conflict Theory of Sexual Stratification." Social Problems, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer, 1971), pp. 3-21
  • Rae Blumberg. "A General Theory of Gender Stratification." Sociological Theory  2  (1984): 23-101
• Related Readings
  • Rae Blumberg. "Extending Lenski's Schema to Hold Up Both Halves of the Sky.”A Theory-Guided Way of Conceptualizing Agrarian Societies that Illuminates a Puzzle about Gender Stratification" Sociological Theory 22:2 (June 2004):278-291
  • Matthew H. McIntyre, Carolyn Pope Edwards.  The Early Development of Gender Differences  Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 38 (2009): 83-97
  • Laurie Wermuth and Miriam Ma'at-Ka-Re Monges. "Gender Stratification: A Structural Model for Examining Case Examples of Women in Less-Developed Countries." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 23.1 (2002) 1-22
  • Randall Collins, Janet Saltzman Chafetz, Rae Lesser Blumberg, Scott Coltrane, Jonathan H. Turner  Toward an Integrated Theory of Gender Stratification Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 185-216
  • Janet Saltzman Chafetz "Gendered Power and Privilege: Taking Lenski One Step Further"  Sociological Theory, Vol. 22, No. 2, Religion, Stratification, and Evolution in Human Societies: Essays in Honor of Gerhard E. Lenski (Jun., 2004), pp. 269-277
  • Joan N. Huber. "Comparative Gender Stratification." Handbook of the Sociology of Gender, 1999, p65-80
  • Maurice Godelier, "The Origins of Male Domination" New Left Review, May-June 1981, pp. 3-17
  • William Tulio Divale, Marvin Harris. "Population, Warfare, and the Male Supremacist Complex." American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Sep., 1976), pp. 521-538 [See also: William Divale, Marvin Harris, Donald T. Williams. "On the Misuse of Statistics: A Reply to Hirschfeld et al."  American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 379-386; William Divale, Marvin Harris.  "The Male Supremacist Complex: Discovery of a Cultural Invention" American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 80, No. 3 (Sep., 1978), pp. 668-671
  • C C Mukhopadhyay, and P J Higgins. "Anthropological Studies of Women's Status Revisited: 1977-1987". Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 17 (1988): 461-495
  • Naomi Quinn. "Anthropological Studies on Women's Status".  Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 6 (1977): 181-225 
  • Chris Hann. "Reproduction and Inheritance: Goody Revisited." Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 37 (2008): 145-158

V.   What determines men's and women's roles and positions within families?

Family and kinship are potentially relevant to gender inequality in varied ways and a lot of work had pursued such issues.  Probably the two most important general issues involve the ways that women and men are unequal within families and the ways that family organization both contributes to and is influenced by gender inequality beyond the family institution.  We will just touch the surface of these issues this week.

• Analytical Task
  • The general analytical problem.  We want to provide an integrated analytical overview of the principal causal arguments about gender inequality and family organization that appear in the common readings.
  • Each of the readings has various causal arguments about family organization, some directly about gender inequality, some relevant to gender inequality but not directly exploring it.  Some of the causal questions may receive different causal analyses by these authors.  Sometimes two or more authors may use a similar causal approach to explain different causal problems.  Our goal is to sort this out. 
  • Our overviews should be organized around the causal arguments, not a series of summaries of what each author wrote (see Thinking Tools).
  • Thinking tools.
    • We want to use one of the following two possible ways to organize the causal assessment (unless one of us has a better way).  The first organizes around what is to be explained, the second around the causes.
      • First approach.  We start by identifying the principal causal problems addressed by the group of papers.  That is, we figure out what they suggest needs to be explained.  Then, we organize these causal problems in a sensible order (including consideration of some problems potentially being secondary or sub-problems of others).  Under each causal problem, we summarize and assess all the relevant explanations found in the readings.
      • Second approach.  We start by identifying the principal causal frameworks used in the papers.  That is, we figure out what they suggest are the conditions or processes that have the most important influence over the outcomes.  Then, we organize these causal frameworks in a sensible order, taking into account which are entirely different and which might be variations of a similar theme, and which are competing versus complementary.  For each of these, after summarizing the causal logic of the framework, we show how it has been used by these authors, describing the range of outcomes the framework is supposed to determine and how it has such effects.
      • Note that regardless which way we organize our analysis of competing causal arguments, it can be valuable to think about not only what is considered by the authors being examine, but also which theoretical questions and which causal frameworks seem relevant but absent.
    • Please reread the "Basics of Causal Descriptions" on the starting point for describing a causal analysis.
  • Bringing it together.  In short, our aim is to produce a critical overview of the principal causal arguments concerning the family and gender inequality, starting with the ideas present in the common readings for this week.  To do this effectively, we need to identify all the relevant causal arguments, deduce the logical structure of each causal argument and determine how to present that clearly (even if the original source is inconsistent or ambiguous), detect how the causal arguments (from different sources) relate to each other and present them in a way that makes those relations clear, and, where possible, summarize the important analytical strengths and weaknesses of each argument (or facet to an argument).

    (We should start with the understanding that this kind of analytical overview is rather easy to do poorly and very demanding to do well and thoroughly.  At this stage we are not aspiring to a professional job but hoping to achieve a reasonable, if basic, analysis.)

• Common Readings
  • Andrew J. Cherlin,  American Marriage in the Early Twenty-First Century The Future of Children Volume 15, Number 2, Fall 2005
  • Down So Long:  Intimate Combat: The Responsibility for Child Rearing
  • Brines, Julie. 1994. "Economic Dependency, Gender, and the Division of Labor at Home."  American Journal of Sociology 100(3): 652-689. 
  • William J. Goode. "The Theoretical Importance of Love"  American Sociological Review, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Feb., 1959), pp. 38-47  [jstor: 2089581]
  • Kathleen Gerson. "Changing Lives, Resistant Institutions: A New Generation Negotiates Gender, Work, and Family Change"  Sociological Forum, Vol. 24, No. 4, December 2009
• Recommended Readings
  
  • Destined for Equality: Institutional Individualism: "Individualistic Family" 157-169
  • Coltrane, Scott. 1989. "Household Labor and the Routine Production of Gender." Social Problems 3
  • Stephanie Coontz. "The Historical Transformation of Marriage," Journal of Marriage and Family,  Volume 66, Issue 4 (p 974-979) November 2004.
  • Beth Anne Shelton, Daphne John.  "The Division of Household Labor." Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 22, (1996), pp. 299-322
  • Andrew J. Cherlin, "The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage"  Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 66, Issue 4 (p 848-861)   November 2004. 
• Related Readings
  
  • Kathleen Gerson.  "Moral Dilemmas, Moral Strategies, and the Transformation of Gender: Lessons from Two Generations of Work and Family Change" Gender & Society. Vol. 16 No. 1, February 2002 8-28
  • Sara B. Raley, Marybeth J. Mattingly, Suzanne M. Bianchi. "How Dual Are Dual-Income Couples? Documenting Change From 1970 to 2001. Journal of Marriage and Family 68:1 (2006), 11-28
  • Davis, S. N., T. Greenstein and J. G. Marks, "Effects of Union Type and Division of Household Labor," Journal of Family Issues 28 (2007):1247-72. [doi: 10.1177/0192513X07300968]
  • Scott Coltrane. Father-Child Relationships and the Status of Women: A Cross-Cultural Study. American Journal of Sociology, 93 (1988): 1060-1095.
  • Joann Vanek. "Time Spent in Housework." Scientific American 231 (Nov 1974):116-120. 
  • Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer. "The Sociology of Women's Economic Role in the Family." American Sociological Review, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Jun., 1977), pp. 387-406 
  • Kathleen Gerson.  (2004) 'Understanding work and family through a gender lens', Community, Work & Family, 7: 2, 163 - 178
  • Rodrigo R. Soares, Bruno L. S. Falcão. "The Demographic Transition and the Sexual Division of Labor." The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 116, No. 6 (Dec., 2008), pp. 1058-1104 
  • Pennington, Suzanne(2009) 'Bisexuals "Doing Gender" in Romantic Relationships', Journal of Bisexuality, 9:1, 33-69
  • Tichenor, Veronica. "Maintaining Men's Dominance: Negotiating Identity and Power When She Earns More." Sex Roles 53, no. 3-4 (2005): 191-205. [doi:10.1007/s11199-005-5678-2]
  • Becker, G. S., "Human Capital, Effort, and the Sexual Division of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics 3(1) (1985):33-58.  [

VI. What is the role of sex differences in the functioning and perpetuation of gender inequality?

Attempts to explain gender inequality at all levels are haunted by essentialism.  Essentialist arguments impute distinctive attributes to women and men and attribute the social differences between women's and men's activities, opportunities, statuses, and roles to these distinct attributes.  Even theoretical analyses of gender inequality that expressly reject the possibility of consequential, inherent sex differences,  commonly build their explanations of inequality on gender differences.  To complicate matters, essentialist arguments proclaiming superior attributes for women exist alongside of the arguments proclaiming women inferior.  Moreover, while for some, essentialism always means a difference based in biology or genetics, for others it includes cultural differences that are embodied in women and men.

• Analytical Task
  • The general analytical problem.   To investigate how essentialist arguments work, we will examine how different kinds of essentialist arguments might be applied to explain some aspect of gender inequality, in contrast to a non-essentialist argument.  We aim to see both the attraction of essentialist arguments and the possibilities for alternatives.
    • Select one form or facet of gender inequality that you will try to explain for this task.  This instance or aspect of gender inequality should be sufficiently important, widespread, and enduring or recurring to merit thoughtful theory and explanation.  It should also be narrow or specific enough that the goal of explaining it is plausible.  For example, the facet might be that wives commonly defer to husbands. 
    • For the selected type or aspect of gender inequality, you will suggest five alternative explanations, each one representing a different approach to explaining such social phenomena.  The explanations should be succinct but clear.  They should also be plausible to the extent that a reasonable person might make such an argument. Plausible does not mean true, of course.  Rather, we are trying to imagine an argument that would seem plausible to people who are advocates for each of the perspectives.
  • The five types of explanation.   Attempt to devise the best explanations you can for the relevant facet of inequality from each of the following perspectives.  Explanations may be categorized in many ways.  The five perspectives defined here are meant to engage different responses to the problem of essentialism.
    
    1. Direct biological - Devise an explanation claiming that some biological difference between the sexes produces the relevant aspect of inequality by making women and men act differently.  For example, an argument might be that men are stronger than women so men dominate women as a simple result of superior strength.  (More complex biological explanations might be derived from evolutionary psychology.)  This type of explanation is usually purely essentialist.  Note that this type of explanation can be divided further into those relying on real biological differences and those imputing fictional biological differences.  Let us stress biological differences that are at least potentially real here, leaving the fictitious ones for below.
    2. Indirect biological - Formulate an explanation claiming some biological difference does not directly produce the inequality, but the biological difference has important effects or implications of some sort, and those effects that make likely or unavoidable the emergence or persistence of the selected aspect of gender inequality.  For example, someone might argue that women's child bearing makes them anxious about the welfare of their children, and that anxiety makes them feel weak and in want of a protector, leading them to defer to husbands.  Or, others might suggest that women's biologically induced child rearing orientation encourages both women and men to make men responsible for warfare, and that men's resulting skill at combat, their possession of weapons, and men's organization around mutual defense leaves wives typically in their husbands' control.  The key for this type of explanation is that the relevant biological differences do not directly cause the gender inequality being explained, but have effects on social behavior and social organization that lead to gender inequality.  These types of explanations have essentialist origins in a biological difference, but the explanation as a whole may invoke mediating causal influences that reduce the essentialist quality, sometimes greatly.
    3.  Non-biological sex difference - Suggest how some socially constructed difference between women and men – one that is neither biological nor a direct result of biological differences – initiates or preserves the aspect of gender inequality being explained.  This will usually be an enduring individual characteristic (a difference that people carry with them, not a difference in their circumstances).  For example, one might claim that women are fearful and dependent because of socialization processes (that have no biological basis), and this psychological condition induces wives to defer to their husbands.  Or, one might argue that childhood sports available only to boys result in a higher competitive drive that accounts for adult men's greater success in business.  This type of explanation claims a real difference exists between women and men (in the society or social context where the inequality being explained occurs; the relevant sex difference need not exist in all or any other society or social context), but this difference is a social construction.  This type of explanation often becomes redundantly circular: each aspect of inequality exists as a result of inequality, and that overall inequality is constituted by the various aspects.
    4. Fictitious sex difference - An imputed sex difference that does not really exist is claimed to play a significant role in producing the selected facet of gender inequality.  For example, someone might suggest that although women have no better capacity for child rearing, people commonly assume they do because women bear children, and that this false expectation produces a division of labor and power favoring men.  This type of explanation focuses on the consequences of beliefs, relying on the observation that beliefs can organize behavior even if they are false beliefs.  While such fictitious differences are commonly assumed to be biological, they need not be.
    5. Causes independent of sex differentiation - A causal process that does not involve any difference between the sexes is argued to produce the inequality being considered.  For example, some might argue that for families to fulfill their social functions effectively, they need one spouse/parent to perform the critical emotional actions needed and the other spouse/parent to perform the practical and leadership actions (this is essentially a well-know idea of Talcott Parsons).  This role differentiation can then result in spouse inequality, as an indirect and unintended consequence.  This category includes highly diverse explanations, the one critical similarity among them being that they do not rely on a sex difference in their central causal argument.  It may be worth noting that one reason explanations based on sex differences (including all the preceding perspectives) are more common is that formulating a plausible analysis that forgoes the mechanism of sex differences is often a hard task.
  • (Note, in this task we are aiming to produce explanations that those advocating each of the above types of explanation would think are reasonable.  It is often hardest to conceive good explanations from the points of view we find unconvincing or unappealing, but the capacity to do this is a valuable skill.)
  • Bringing it together.  The point of this exercise is to examine how it is possible to devise a range of alternative causal explanations of gender inequality stressing some mechanism of sex differences, while developing alternative theories that do not rely on sex differences is rather hard.  The difference arguments run the full range from being directly and fully biological to relying on non-biological or fictitious differences in indirect ways.  The arguments that exclude not only biology but all dependence on sex differences commonly derive from another theoretical approach, such as functionalism or conflict theories.  The challenge with these approaches is not only to make the immediate causal process eschew differences, but to avoid relying on sex differences one or two steps earlier in the causal chain.
• Common Readings
  • Carol Gilligan. "Hearing the Difference: Theorizing Connection."  Hypatia, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 120-127
  • Carol Gilligan. "Reply by Carol Gilligan." Signs, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Winter, 1986), pp. 324-333
  • Jaffee, Sara; Hyde, Janet Shibley. "Gender Differences In Moral Orientation: A Meta-Analysis." Psychological Bulletin. Vol 126(5), Sep 2000, 703-726. [doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.126.5.703]
  • Valian, Virginia. 1998. "Sex, Schemas, and Success: What's Keeping Women Back?" Academe 84(5): 50-55. (Compare Ridgeway in Section III above.)  (See Valian in Optional Readings for fuller account.)
• Recommended Readings
  
  • Uri Gneezy, Kenneth L. Leonard, And John A. List. "Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence From a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society." Econometrica, Vol. 77, No. 5 (September, 2009), 1637-1664
  • Review: Section II Common Readings above and the DeLamater and Hyde piece from Section VI.

  • Douglas Schrock, Michael Schwalbe. "Men, Masculinity, and Manhood Acts."  Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 35: 277-295 (August 2009). [doi: 10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-115933]
  • Janis S. Bohan. "Regarding gender: Essentialism, Constructionism, and Feminist Psychology." Psychology of Women Quarterly, Mar 93, Vol. 17 Issue 1, p5-22 
  • Matthew H. McIntyre, Carolyn Pope Edwards. "The Early Development of Gender Differences."  Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 38: 83-97 (October 2009)
  • Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A Cross-Cultural Analysis Of The Behavior Of Women And Men: Implications For The Origins Of Sex Differences. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 699-727. [doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.128.5.699]
  • Nancy Chodorow. "Oedipal Asymmetries and Heterosexual Knots." Social Problems, Vol. 23, No. 4, Feminist Perspectives: The Sociological Challenge (Apr., 1976), pp. 454-468
• Related Readings
  
  • Eagly, A. H., & Wood, W. (1999). The Origins Of Sex Differences In Human Behavior: Evolved Dispositions Versus Social Roles. American Psychologist, 54, 408-423. 
  • Valian, V. (1999). The Cognitive Bases Of Gender Bias. Brooklyn Law Review, 65, 1037-1061.
  • Clopton, Nancy A.; Sorell, Gwendolyn T.  "Gender differences in moral reasoning." . Psychology of Women Quarterly, Mar93, Vol. 17 Issue 1, p85 [doi: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.1993.tb00678.x]
  • Pamela L. Geller. "Identity and Difference: Complicating Gender in Archaeology."   Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 38: 65-81 (October 2009) [doi: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-091908-164414]
  • Barbara J. Risman, "Intimate Relationships from a Microstructural Perspective: Mothering Men." Gender and Society 1:1 (March 1987). 
  • Nancy Chodorow. "Mothering, Object-Relations, and the Female Oedipal Configuration." Feminist Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Feb., 1978), pp. 137-158 [jstor: 3177630]
  • Timothy J. Biblarz & Judith Stacey. "How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?" Journal of Marriage and Family 72:1 (2010):3-22  [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x]
  • Adrienne Rich. 1980. "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5 (4): 631-660
  • Judith Butler. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 519-531. 
  • Nussbaum, M. C. The Professor Of Parody [J. Butler]. The New Republic v. 220 no. 8 (February 22 1999) p. 37-45.  {Also, Nussbaum, M. C. Martha C. Nussbaum And Her Critics: An Exchange [discussion of February 22, 1999 article, The Professor Of Parody]. The New Republic v. 220 no. 16 (April 19 1999) p. 43-5}
  • Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn. "Fashionable Subjects: On Judith Butler and the Causal Idioms of Postmodern Feminist Theory."  Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 649-674
  • Veronica Vasterling. "Butler's Sophisticated Constructivism: A Critical Assessment."  Hypatia, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer, 1999), pp. 17-38
  • Barbara F. Reskin. "Including Mechanisms in Our Models of Ascriptive Inequality." American Sociological Review, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 1-21

VII.  What is the role of sexuality?

Sexuality has been evoked in multiple ways in the study of gender inequality.  Some have considered it as a possible motivating cause for inequality, others have explored how gender inequality can mold the experience and practice of sexuality, and others have tried to theoretically incorporate sexuality as a peculiar tension between women and men that mediates both the causes and effects of gender inequality.  Essentially, everyone recognizes sexuality is critically important to gender inequality, but we lack agreement or clarity on how it matters.

• Analytical Task
  • The general analytical problem.  Focusing on heterosexual behavior, it appears that men seek to have sex with women much more than women seek to have it with men, relative both to how often they have sex and with how many partners.  Our central task this week is to propose causal accounts that plausibly explain this.
  • Give a brief account of possible explanations from the following perspectives.  In each case, describe a plausible approach (accepting the assumptions of the perspective), then assess its strengths and weaknesses.
    • Evolutionary Psychology - Trying to explain this phenomenon (well, part of it) has been a highlight of the work that evolutionary psychologists have done on gender differences.  Provide an appropriate brief explanation of this sort, identify the fundamental assumptions it requires.  Also, consider the evidence and what might be important shortcomings.
    • Indirect biological - Formulate an explanation claiming some biological difference does not directly produce the inequality, but the biological difference has important effects or implications of some sort, and those effects that make likely or unavoidable the emergence and persistence of this sexuality difference.   Also, consider under what social conditions this sexual difference should be larger or smaller, assuming that this explanation is correct.
    • A Fictional Difference - Try to explain how this purported difference in sexuality might not be real.  This includes explaining why the fictional belief in this difference would arise and become prevalent.
    • Secondary effect of gender inequality - Consider how this difference can arise as a result of gender inequality.   Examine what social conditions must be true for this causal sequence to occur.
    • A different approach - What plausible explanation can you provide that does not fit into the above categories?
  • Can you provide reasoning or evidence to show that one of the explanations is better than the others?
  • Bringing it together.  In short, our aim is to construct and assess alternative basic causal arguments seeking to understand a widely accepted difference in the sexuality of women and men. In each case, try to be clear about the logic of the causal argument.  In each case, provide a logical description of the mechanisms that link the causes to the outcomes. 
  • Alternative Analytical Task [ignore]
    • The general analytical problem. Our central task this week is to propose a causal account that plausibly explains the relationship between one aspect of sexuality and gender inequality.  
      • Everyone who analyzes gender inequality considers sexuality important, but they have highly varied ideas about what matters and why.  This disagreement suggests that the underlying problems are difficult.  We cannot hope to solve them in this brief effort.  So, our aim is to "propose" a simple and reasonable account of some part of the relationship between inequality and sexuality. We are not trying to develop a full, professional analysis.
      • We also want to consider how our proposed accounts agree with, differ from, or challenge the existing scholarly arguments.  Again, our goal here is limited.  The aim is to give a reasonable first sense of how the proposed account fits (or does not fit).
    • Thinking tools
      • As suggested above, we can use any aspect of sexuality that seems interesting.  However, it may help if the selected facet of sexuality:
        • has a relationship to gender inequality that at least some writers think is important.  Which way it is important is wide open.  The role of the chosen sexuality characteristic relative to gender inequality may be cause, effect, catalyst, or whatever else seems causally relevant.
        • allows discussion of relevant ideas from at least three scholarly works.  These may be part of the common readings, any of the other readings recommended here, or another legitimate source.  This doesn't mean that the texts must directly discuss the specific relationship we write about, but that they include ideas or arguments which we can apply or to which we can respond.
      • A basic approach to the task presentation might have the following three parts:
        • First, we lay out the causal, explanatory problem.  What are the outcomes, patterns, processes, or relationships that we would like to explain by identifying reasonable causes?  And why is this important enough to merit attention? (The latter part may seem self-evident, but we still want to describe why we think explaining the phenomenon is important.)
        • Second, we provide the causal analysis.  We want to be as complete as possible within reasonable space limits.  And, we want to be clear, simple, and direct. 
        • Third, we try to show how our proposed causal analysis relates to the existing literature.  For our purposes, we can limit ourselves to considering a couple theories or perspectives that would support or compliment our approach and a couple that would be likely to question our proposed causal analysis.  (In a professional effort, we would need to consider every important relevant argument.)  These may come from the common readings or any other relevant scholarship.  When discussing those who might disagree, we want to be as specific as possible about what criticism we would expect from each of these "opponents" and how we might respond. 
    • Bringing it together.  In short, our aim is to construct a basic causal argument seeking to understand how some aspect of sexuality is related to gender inequality, and to assess how that causal argument relates to the existing literature (as represented in our readings).
• Common Readings
  • David L. Weis. "The Use of Theory in Sexuality Research". The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 35, No. 1, The Use of Theory in Research and Scholarship on Sexuality (1998), pp. 1-9
  • Letitia Anne Peplau. "Human Sexuality: How Do Men and Women Differ?"  Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 37-40
  • Joan Acker. "Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations"  Gender & Society 1990 4 (2): 139-158 (stress pp. 151-4).
  • Down So Long:  Intimate Combat: Sexuality and Gender Inequality
  • Carl N. Degler. "What Ought To Be and What Was: Women's Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century." The American Historical Review, Vol. 79, No. 5 (Dec., 1974), pp. 1467-1490 
  • Catharine A. MacKinnon.  "Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory." Signs, Vol. 7, No. 3, Feminist Theory (Spring, 1982), pp. 515-544
  • John D. DeLamater and Janet Shibley Hyde. "Essentialism vs. Social Constructionism in the Study of Human Sexuality." The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 35, No. 1, The Use of Theory in Research and Scholarship on Sexuality (1998), pp. 10-18.
  • Bem, D. J. (2000). Exotic Becomes Erotic: Interpreting the biological correlates of sexual orientation. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 29, 531-548. 

• Recommended Readings
  
  • Zaylia, Jessica Leigh(2009) 'Toward a Newer Theory of Sexuality: Terms, Titles, and the Bitter Taste of Bisexuality', Journal of Bisexuality, 9 (2): 109 - 123.
  • Crawford, M., et. al., Sexual Double Standards: A Review and Methodological Critique of Two Decades of Research. The Journal of Sex Research v. 40 no. 1 (February 2003) p. 13-26
  • Dennis D. Waskul, Phillip Vannini, Desiree Wiesen.  "Women and Their Clitoris: Personal Discovery, Signification, and Use."   Symbolic Interaction May 2007, Vol. 30, No. 2: 151-174
  • Breanne Fahs.  "Compulsory Bisexuality?: The Challenges of Modern Sexual Fluidity."     Journal of Bisexuality, Volume 9, Issue 3 & 4 July 2009 , pages 431-449
  • John A. Miller, Joan Acker, Kate Barry, Miriam M. Johnson and Lois A. West. "Comments on MacKinnon's 'Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State'." Signs, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 168-184; [jstor: 3174252; and Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Reply to Miller, Acker and Barry, Johnson, West, and Gardiner." Signs, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 184-188 [jstor: 3174253]
  •   Steven Epstein. "An Incitement to Discourse: Sociology and the History of Sexuality."  Sociological Forum, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp. 485-502
• Related Readings
  
  • Nicole Constable. "The Commodification of Intimacy: Marriage, Sex, and Reproductive Labor."  Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 38: 49-64 (2009)
  • Impett, E. A., & Peplau, L. A. (2003). Sexual Compliance: Gender, Motivational, And Relationship Perspectives. Journal of Sex Research, 40(1), 87-100 [doi: 10.1080/00224490309552169]
  • Ronald Weitzer. "Sociology of Sex Work."  Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 35: 213-234 (2009)
  • Pennington, Suzanne(2009) 'Bisexuals "Doing Gender" in Romantic Relationships', Journal of Bisexuality, 9: 1, 33-69
  • Lisa Duggan "From Instincts to Politics: Writing the History of Sexuality in the U.S."  The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 27, No. 1, Feminist Perspectives on Sexuality. Part 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 95-109 
  • Michael W. Wiederman. "The Truth Must Be in Here Somewhere: Examining the Gender Discrepancy in Self-Reported Lifetime Number of Sex Partners." The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 34, No. 4 (1997), pp. 375-386
  • Norman R. Brown, Robert C. Sinclair. "Estimating Number of Lifetime Sexual Partners: Men and Women Do It Differently." The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Aug., 1999), pp. 292-297
  • John Levi Martin, Matt George. "Theories of Sexual Stratification: Toward an Analytics of the Sexual Field and a Theory of Sexual Capital." Sociological Theory, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 2006), pp. 107-132
  • Judith Treas, Deirdre Giesen. "Sexual Infidelity among Married and Cohabiting Americans." Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Feb., 2000), pp. 48-60
  • Blow, Adrian J.; Hartnett, Kelley. "Infidelity In Committed Relationships II: A Substantive Review ." Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Volume 31, Issue 2, (2005): 217-33.
  • Lever, J., Frederick, D., & Peplau, L. A. (2006). Does Size Matter? Men's And Women's Views On Penis Size Across The Life Span. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 7(3), 129-143

VIII. What is the role of violence and intimidation in the relationships between men and women? 

Most theoretical approaches to gender inequality suggest that violence between women and men plays a role in sustaining inequality; some also point toward violence as an initial cause.  A recurring issue concerns the degree to which violence is an expression or result of gender inequality or, alternatively, is a cause of inequality.  The separate roles of rape, harassment, and domestic violence, and their relationships to each other are another critical question.  Much research and argument has also been focused on the question of women's aggressive impulses and actions. 

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical Task: Try to develop a reasonable explanation for why women do not engage in sexual harassment or sexual violence at rates similar to those of men.  Here, our strategy is to reverse the usual way people approach the problem of gender violence, aiming to explain the (suppressed) rates for women rather than the (elevated) rates for men.
  • In addition to the reading materials, consider carefully the pointers below in the sections on Thinking Tools and Well Formed Causal Arguments
  • In short, taking into account the pointers below and the ideas in the materials we have read up to this point, you want to develop a reasonable explanation why women do not engage in harassment or violence toward men at the rates that men do toward women.
  • Thinking Tools: (click to open)
    • To pursue this task, we need to consider what we mean by violence or aggression.  When people refer to the patterns of violence between women and men (in modern societies), they are usually referring to several kinds of aggressive behavior, particularly: (1) sexual violence (especially rape), (2) sexual harassment, and (3) intimate partner violence (which includes wife battering).  
    • These three categories implicitly distinguish patterns of aggression based on several criteria: (1) the degree to which the aggressive acts involve sexuality, (2) the severity of the aggressive acts, and (3) the existing relationship between the relevant men and women. 
    • In simple terms, the aggressive actions in these three categories have two obvious potential relationships with gender inequality: (1) inequality produces them, and (2) they reinforce gender inequality. 
      • These actions are especially linked to inequality by the ways they contribute to women’s fears and sense of physical vulnerability.  That fear is crucial.  For it is the prospect of possible violence that induces women to restrict their behavior, to seek male protectors, and to heed men’s wishes.  The fear of violence is commonly a more prevalent and effective mechanism of control than the experience of violence.
      • Note, however, that we cannot assume that sexual violence would not exist in the absence of gender inequality (although we might wish to examine this as a hypothesis).  We know, for example, that partner violence occurs in gay male and lesbian couples at rates comparable to those of heterosexual couples.  To put it differently, we have good evidence for inferring that gender inequality is a contributory cause for sexual violence, but not for the claim that it is a necessary cause.  Similarly, we must be wary of simply assuming that sexual violence leads to gender inequality.
    • To simplify our task, we will set aside the question of intimate partner violence and focus on the other two kinds mentioned above, sexual violence and sexual harassment.  So, our goal is to explain why women, seemingly, indulge less often in sexual violence and harassment toward men than the reverse.
    • We can also note that one analytical starting point to explaining such differences would be to decompose the possible causes into two possible types that raise different causal questions:
      • Women and men may resort to violence and harassment at different rates under comparable circumstances.  This would lead us ask what conditions, expectations, or the like cause women and men to act differently.
      • Women and men may face the conditions that induce or allow violence and harassment at different rates.  This would lead us to ask how and why women and men find themselves at different rates in circumstances that promote aggression toward the other sex.
    • [Both men and women vary greatly, so we must decide if we will abstract away all that variation (and thus talk of "men" or "women" in the most generic or abstract possible manner) or if we feel that some variations (e.g. wealth or age) require consideration for the analysis.  Remember that you can restrict the scope of your analysis.]
    • Try to approach the problem of defining potential causes as systematically as you can.  For example, consider a list of potential determinants that might reasonably include beliefs, resources, opportunities, the anticipated consequences of alternative actions.  Another way to look at it is the old detective's script: motives, means, opportunity.  The key here is to avoid randomly attaching yourself to one or two possible causes, just because they happen to be what you first think about.  You want to think seriously about what you might have neglected.
      
    • It is often useful to start this kind of analytic reasoning concretely, concentrating on circumstances we know best.  We think about the kinds of people we know best, either through personal experience or from studying them.  We ask ourselves why the women in these circumstances or groups do not engage in sexual harassment or sexual violence toward men as much as do men toward women.  If we can gain an explanatory foothold in these familiar circumstances, we have a starting point for developing a more general explanation.
    • Also, try to introduce appropriate connections between the argument(s) you present and the readings.  Consider not only the common readings from this week, but also past readings and optional ones from this week that seem particularly relevant.
  • Well Formed Causal Arguments: (click to open)
    • The causal arguments should try to conform to the standards for a good causal argument that we have read about and discussed.  Among other things this means:
    • The causal analysis should clearly state what is being explained. 
    • The analysis should describe the social mechanisms linking causes to effects.  It should show what happens in the world that produces the outcomes, what kinds of people or organizations behave in manner, what circumstances arise that induce the relevant behavior, and so forth.  This may be abstract at the level of the causal model.
    • The analysis should consider why the decisive causes exist and take the form that they do.  That is, the causal analysis should push back at least one step past the causes being invoked to ask what causes them.
    • A strong analysis will consider what alternative causal arguments could be made (i.e., how the causal processes could be different from what you describe) and show what evidence or logic favors the argument you have presented.  A thorough causal analysis will recognize that other causal models might be considered plausible, and try to compare the causal model being promoted to the alternatives.
    • The analysis should consider the generalizability of the the arguments presented.  It should consider to what periods, places, types of societies, parts of society, kinds of social relationships or interactions do the arguments apply? 
    • Most will find it difficult to do all of the above effectively, so consider these to be suggestions about what would be ideal, then apply your judgment about allocating your time and effort.
  • Analytical Task Alt 2 [Ignore unless instructed otherwise]
    • Try to develop a clear causal analysis of the role played in gender inequality by a fear of violence.
    • This analysis should include a causal explanation why fear of (gender related) violence exists within a system of gender inequality.  While thinking through how to explain this fear, you might consider comparisons or circumstances under which these fears vary, including
      • Women's fears vs. men's fears
      • The circumstances under which women experience greater fear and those where they feel safe
      • Differences in the amount of fear typical amongst groups or categories of women according to their age, affluence, location, companions, or any other relevant social condition
      • Differences in the distribution of fear across societies distinguished by such conditions as forms of economic and political organization, degree of development, prevailing religious or cultural institutions and the like
    • This analysis should also include a causal explanation of the consequences for gender inequality of the distribution of fears of violence.  In what ways do fears of violence influence the behavior of women or the relationships between women and men?  Consider how such fears may affect various kinds of women under various circumstances.  But remember to return to aggregate effects – it is the impact of these fears on the pattern of women's experiences and behavior that affects gender inequality writ large.
    • Avoid the analytic temptation to argue as if equality might imply an absence of discord and aggression.  Realistically, equality between two groups by itself only leads us to expect that acts of aggression will occur with equal frequency and effect between members of the two groups.  Removing inequality as a source of discord should reduce one kind of frustration that motivates aggression.  Other sources of discord still exist, however, and some forms of aggression that could be suppressed by inequality might even rise.
• Common Readings
  • Claudia Garcia-Moreno, Lori Heise, Henrica A. F. M. Jansen, Mary Ellsberg and Charlotte Watts. "Violence against Women."  Science, New Series, Vol. 310, No. 5752 (Nov. 25, 2005), pp. 1282-1283  [data brief] [doi: 10.1126/science.1121400]
  • David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood, Elizabeth M. Ridder. "Partner Violence and Mental Health Outcomes in a New Zealand Birth Cohort." Journal of Marriage and Family, 2005, Volume 67, Issue 5 (p 1103-1119)  [This article was published with the following two commentaries and rejoinder by the authors – these clarify the points of disagreement.]
    • Michael P. Johnson. "Domestic Violence: It's Not about Gender: Or Is It?." Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 67, No. 5 (Dec., 2005), pp. 1126-1130
    • Amy Holtzworth-Munroe. "Male Versus Female Intimate Partner Violence: Putting Controversial Findings Into Context." Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 67, Issue 5 (p 1120-1125) [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2005.00203.x]
    • David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood, Elizabeth M. Ridder. "Rejoinder." Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 67, Issue 5 (p 1131-1136)
  • Down So Long:  Intimate Combat: Violence and Intimidation
  • Download Article:  Thomae, Manuela, and Afroditi Pina. " Sexist Humor and Social Identity: The Role of Sexist Humor in Men’s In-Group Cohesion, Sexual Harassment, Rape Proclivity, and Victim Blame." HUMOR 28, no. 2 (2015): 187. [read: 190-196 on In-Group Cohesion & Sexual Harassment]
  • Download Article:  McLaughlin, Heather, Christopher Uggen, and Amy Blackstone. " Sexual Harassment, Workplace Authority, and the Paradox of Power." American Sociological Review 77, no. 4 (2012): 625-47. [read: 626-27, 635-39]
  • Review Robert Sapolsky,  "Testosterone Rules" from section III above.
  • Thompson, Carleen M., Susan M. Dennison, and Anna Stewart. " Are Female Stalkers More Violent Than Male Stalkers? Understanding Gender Differences in Stalking Violence Using Contemporary Sociocultural Beliefs." Sex Roles 66, no. 5 (2012): 351-65. [read: 351-354]
  • Little, Betsi, and Cheryl Terrance. " Perceptions of Domestic Violence in Lesbian Relationships: Stereotypes and Gender Role Expectations." Journal of Homosexuality 57, no. 3 (2010): 429-40. [read: 429-432]
• Recommended Readings
  
  • Archer, J. (2002). Sex Differences In Physically Aggressive Acts Between Heterosexual Partners: A Metaanalytic Review. Aggression & Violent Behavior, 7(4), 313-351. [doi: 10.1016/S1359-1789(01)00061-1]
  • Saguy, Abigail C. "Employment Discrimination or Sexual Violence?: Defining Sexual Harassment in American and French Law." Law & Society Review. 34:4 (2000):1091-1128. also see Saguy, Abigail C. "What is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne," Thomas Jefferson Law Review, 27:45, (2005):45-56. 
  • Manuel Eisner.  "Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime. " Crime and Justice, Vol. 30, (2003), pp. 83-142
  • Malcolm M. Feeley, Deborah L. Little.  "The Vanishing Female: The Decline of Women in the Criminal Process, 1687-1912."  Law & Society Review, Vol. 25, No. 4 (1991), pp. 719-758 
  • Quinn, Beth A. "Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power and Meaning of 'Girl Watching.'"  Gender & Society, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 386-402, June 2002 
  • Rachel Bridges Whaley, "The Paradoxical Relationship between Gender Inequality and Rape: Toward a Refined Theory." Gender & Society, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 531-555, Aug 2001  [doi: 10.1177/089124301015004003]
  • Murray A. Straus.  2008. "Dominance and symmetry in partner violence by male and female university students in 32 nations." Children and Youth Services Review 30(3):252-275.
  •   Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 699-727. [note: also recommended for previous section] 
  • Sarah K. Murnen, Carrie Wright, and Gretchen Kaluzny.  "If 'Boys Will Be Boys,' Then Girls Will Be Victims? A Meta-Analytic Review of the Research That Relates Masculine Ideology to Sexual Aggression."  Sex Roles Volume 46, Numbers 11-12 / June, 2002
  • Peggy Reeves Sanday. "Rape-Prone Versus Rape-Free Campus Cultures." Violence Against Women, Vol. 2, No. 2, 191-208 (1996)    [doi: 10.1177/1077801296002002006]
  • Quinn, Beth A. "Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power and Meaning of "Girl Watching"." Gender & Society 16, no. 3 (2002): 386-402. [doi:10.1177/0891243202016003007]
• Related Readings
  
  • Linda Gordon. "Family Violence, Feminism, and Social Control." Feminist Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 453-478
  • Christopher Uggen & Amy Blackstone. "Sexual Harrasment as a Gendered Expression of Power."  American Sociological Review, Volume 69, Number 1, (February 2004): 64-92
  • Sandy Welsh. "Gender And Sexual Harassment." Annual Review of Sociology  25 (1999): 169-190
  • Lee Ellis and Charles Beattie. "The Feminist Explanation for Rape: An Empirical Test." The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Feb., 1983), pp. 74-93 
  • Kimberly Martin, Lynne M. Vieraitis and Sarah Britto. "Gender Equality and Women's Absolute Status: A Test of the Feminist Models of Rape."  Violence Against Women. 12 (4) 2006: 321-339
  • Gwen Hunnicutt. "Varieties of Patriarchy and Violence Against Women Resurrecting "Patriarchy" as a Theoretical Tool."  Violence Against Women. 15 (5) 2009: 553 - 573    [doi: 10.1177/1077801208331246]
  • Tom W. Smith. "The Polls: Gender and Attitudes Toward Violence." The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 384-396 [jstor: 2748632]
  • Richard C. Eichenberg. "Gender Differences In Public Attitudes Toward The Use Of Force By The United States, 1990-2003." International Security 28.1 (2003) 110-141
  • Jon Hurwitz and Shannon Smithey, "Gender Differences on Crime and Punishment." Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 89-115
  • Joan B. Kelly & Michael P. Johnson. "Differentiation Among Types Of Intimate Partner Violence: Research Update And Implications For Interventions." Family Court Review, Volume 46, Issue 3, 2008 (p 476-499)   [doi: 10.1111/j.1744-1617.2008.00215.x]
  • Richard B. Felson, Alison C. Cares. "Gender and the Seriousness of Assaults on Intimate Partners and Other Victims." Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 67, Issue 5 (2005):1182-1195
  • Murray A. Straus and Ignacio Luis Ramirez. 2007. "Gender Symmetry In Prevalence, Severity, And Chronicity Of Physical Aggression Against Dating Partners By University Students In Mexico And USA." Aggressive Behavior 33:281-290.  [doi: 10.1002/ab.20199]
  • Russell P. Dobash and R. Emerson Dobash. "Women's Violence to Men in Intimate Relationships." The British Journal of Criminology 44 (2004): 324-349    [doi: 10.1093/bjc/azh026]

IX.  How has the economy influenced men's and women's positions in society?

Analyses of gender inequality attribute great importance to the economy.  Gender inequality appears everywhere embedded in economic inequality, in the sense that a critical aspect of gender inequality involves unequal access to economic resources and positions.  This relationship becomes clearer in more "advanced" societies where economic organization has become institutionally differentiated from kinship and political organization.  Sometimes this unequal economic access is understood as an expression of gender inequality, sometimes a cause of gender inequality, sometimes a result. Many analyses consider it all three.

• Analytical Task
  • Analytical Task 1: Develop a causal analysis of economic inequality between women and men that accounts for two empirical observations, one being the earnings inequality between the sexes by the gender composition of major occupational categories, the other being the changing likelihood that wives will earn more than their husbands.
    
    • The data to be explained can be found in three tables (click to see).  Use the tabs at the bottom to switch between tables.
      • The first table shows the 2012 earnings gap in the 20 occupational categories that have the largest number of females.  These have been sorted by the proportion female.  The numbers in dark red show the earnings gap where women also account for two-thirds or more of the those in the occupational category.
      • The second table shows the same kind of data as the first, but is for the 20 occupational categories that have the largest number of males.  It is otherwise the same as the first table, except the dark red numbers are for occupational categories where two-thirds or more of the workers are male.
      • The third table shows the changing proportion of married couples where the wife earns more than the husband over the 25 years up to 2011.
    • Preliminary to developing an analysis, the first task is, of course, to interpret what the data in the tables tell us about economic inequality between women and men.  It is recommended that you focus on the dark red numbers of all the tables.  The first two tables are meant to be interpreted as one. 
    • The main task is to develop a background analysis of gender inequality in the economy, as it exists today and how it has changed over the past several decades.  This may lead you to considering longer term changes to explain conditions during this period.
    • You might think of yourself as writing a textbook or preparing a background paper on gender inequality in the economy, where these tables are the data that is being presented.  Your goal is to offer an understanding of these tables. 
    • One way to think about this is in terms of what we don't see in the tables.
      • Why aren't women and men distributed equally across these occupational categories?
      • Why are women's earnings lower?
      • Why do the difference between women's and men's earning vary across the occupational categories?
      • Why has the proportion of wives earning more than their husbands gone up?  
      • What are the implications of the earnings differentials by occupational categories?
      • What are the implications of the data on wives' earnings?
      • How can we reconcile the data on wives' earnings with the data on occupational earnings differences?
    • In short, we are aiming at a brief explanation of women's vs. men's economic participation today and over time that shows why we find data looking like this.
  • Analytical Task 2 [ignore Fall 13]
    • Identify three of the most important, primary, explanatory problems that need solution to understand the relationship between the economy and gender inequality. 
      • Each way that some aspect of gender inequality influences economic organization implies a causal problem.  Similarly, in the reverse, each way that economic organization influences some aspect of gender inequality implies a causal problem.  For example, women used to have no access to most high-status positions in the American economy and are now still under represented in them.  In either direction we might consider the intensity or degree of gender inequality, rather than some aspect of gender inequality, as that which influences or is influenced by economic organization.  For each observation or claim about economic inequality between women and men, we can ask "why?" or "how?"  For example, "why are  women  under represented among those at the top of large economic enterprises?" or "how does women's relative absence from positions great economic power influence the persistence of gender inequality?"
      • Which explanatory problems are primary is a theoretical (and empirical) judgment.  A primary causal process is one without which the relationship between the economy and gender inequality would look and work differently.  Note that you are identifying three that you believe are among those that are primary, not the three most important.
    • For each of the three selected, primary, explanatory problems, do the following: State clearly what is the explanatory problem and why it is a primary or important one.  Think carefully about what makes some causal processes more important than others when we are trying to understand a social phenomenon (her the relationship between gender inequality and economic organization). 
    • Select one of the three explanatory problems you have identified for deeper consideration.  For that problem:
      • Briefly describe what stand out as the possible causal processes that could account for the relationship or condition that is the focus of the explanatory problem.  For example, what might be  the causal processes that account for few women being in positions of high economic power?  These are the competing or alternative explanations for the problem.  These may include the causes or explanations explicitly suggested in the literature concerning the problem, or explanations derived from applying a more general theoretical orientation (e.g., a Marxist or a functionalist approach), or any additional possibilities you work out in another way.
      • Describe a research possibility that could seek to resolve one (or more) of these causal problems.  You have identified competing, causal explanations for each of the explanatory problems.  For one of these, consider how we might hope to learn which causal explanation is more valid by doing relevant research.  To do this, we usually want to think about the circumstances under which the competing theories suggest that something in the world should look or work differently. 
    • To summarize, the analytical task involves (1) identifying three primary, explanatory problems relating gender inequality and economic organization, providing a careful description for each of those explanatory problems, stating why it is important, (2) for one explanatory problem, exploring competing explanations that could solve the problem, and describing a research design that could, hypothetically, discover which explanation is better.
• Common Readings
  • Barbara F. Reskin. "Bringing the Men Back in: Sex Differentiation and the Devaluation of Women's Work." Gender and Society, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 58-81
  • Destined for Equality: Employment: Gaining Equality from the Economy
  • Christine L. Williams. "The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the "Female" Professions," Social Problems, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Aug., 1992), pp. 253-267
  • Eagly, Alice H., and Linda L. Carli. "Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership." Harvard Business Review 85, no. 9 (September 2007): 63-71.
  • England, Paula. "Gender Inequality in Labor Markets: The Role of Motherhood and Segregation." Social Politics 12 (2005):264-288.
• Recommended Readings
  • Francine D. Blau. "Trends in the Well-Being of American Women, 1970-1995." Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 112-165 
  • Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn. "The Gender Pay Gap: Have Women Gone as Far as They Can?" Academy of Management Perspectives 21 (February 2007): 7-23.  [Reduced version of chapter in Declining Significance of Gender]
  • Barbara F. Reskin, "Including Mechanisms in Our Models of Ascriptive Inequality: 2002 Presidential Address", American Sociological Review, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 1-21
  • Michelle J Budig. "Male Advantage And The Gender Composition Of Jobs: Who Rides The Glass Escalator?" Social Problems. May 2002. Vol. 49, Iss. 2; p. 258 
  • Elizabeth H. Gorman and Julie A. Kmec. "Hierarchical Rank and Women's Organizational Mobility: Glass Ceilings in Corporate Law Firms." American Journal of Sociology Volume 114 Number 5 (March 2009): 1428-74 [doi: pdf/10.1086/595950]
  • Christine E. Bose, Philip L. Bereano and Mary Malloy. "Household Technology and the Social Construction of Housework." Technology and Culture, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 53-82 
  • Maria Charles. "Deciphering Sex Segregation: Vertical and Horizontal Inequalities in Ten National Labor Markets." Acta Sociologica, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Dec., 2003), pp. 267-287 
  • Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Benard, In Paik. "Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?" American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 112, No. 5 (Mar., 2007), pp. 1297-1338 
  • Louise Marie Roth. Women on Wall Street: Despite Diversity Measures, Wall Street Remains Vulnerable to Sex Discrimination Charges. Academy of Management Perspectives, Feb 2007, Vol. 21  [doi: 10.5465/AMP.2007.24286162]
  • Judge, Timothy A.; Livingston, Beth A. "Is The Gap More Than Gender? A Longitudinal Analysis Of Gender, Gender Role Orientation, And Earnings."  Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol 93(5), Sep 2008, 994-1012. 
  • Claudia Goldin. "The Changing Economic Role of Women: A Quantitative Approach." Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 13, No. 4, The Measure of American History (Spring, 1983), pp. 707-733  [jstor: 203887]
  • Claudia Goldin. "The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women's Employment, Education, and Family." The American Economic Review, Vol. 96, No. 2 (May, 2006), pp. 1-21
  • Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer. "Demographic Influence on Female Employment and the Status of Women."  American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 4, Changing Women in a Changing Society (Jan., 1973), pp. 946-961; see also Valerie K. Oppenheimer. "The Interaction of Demand and Supply and its Effect on the Female Labour Force in the United States." Population Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Nov., 1967), pp. 239-259 
  • England, Paula, Paul Allison, and Yuxiao Wu. "Does Feminization Lower Wages, Do Declines in Wages Cause Feminization, and How Can We Tell From Longitudinal Data?" Social Science Research 36(3) (2007): 1237-56. [doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2006.08.003]
  • Trond Petersen, Vemund Snartland, Eva M. Meyersson Milgrom.  "Are female workers less productive than male workers?"  Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 25(1) (2007): 13-37. 
• Related Readings
  
  • Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz, Ilyana Kuziemko. "The Homecoming of American College Women: The Reversal of the College Gender Gap." The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall, 2006), pp. 133-156
  • Jerry A. Jacobs. "Gender Inequality and Higher Education."  Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 22 (1996): 153-185 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.22.1.153]
  • Claudia Buchmann, Thomas A. DiPrete, Anne McDaniel.  "Gender Inequalities in Education."  Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 34 (2008): 319-337 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134719]
  • England, Paula and Su Li. "Desegregation Stalled: The Changing Gender Composition of College Majors, 1971-2002." Gender & Society 20(5) (2006):657-677.
  • M. Evertsson, P. England, I. Mooi-Reci, J. Hermsen, J. de Bruijn, D. Cotter. "Is Gender Inequality Greater at Lower or Higher Educational Levels? Common Patterns in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States." Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 16(2):210-241 (2009) [doi: 10.1093/sp/jxp008]
  • Eagly, A. H., Johannesen-Schmidt, M. C., & van Engen, M. L. (2003). Transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles: A meta-analysis comparing women and men. Psychological Bulletin, 129(4), 569-591.
  • Eckel, Catherine; de Oliveira, Angela C. M.; Grossman, Philip J.  "Gender and Negotiation in the Small: Are Women (Perceived to Be) More Cooperative than Men?" Negotiation Journal, Volume 24, Issue 4, 2008: 429 [doi: 10.1111/j.1571-9979.2008.00196.x]; Kolb, Deborah M.  "Too Bad for the Women or Does It Have to Be? Gender and Negotiation Research over the Past Twenty-Five Years." Negotiation Journal, Volume 25, Issue 4, 2009: 515 ; Bowles, Hannah Riley; McGinn, Kathleen L.  "Gender in Job Negotiations: A Two-Level Game."  Negotiation Journal, Volume 24, Issue 4, 2008: 393 [doi: 10.1111/j.1571-9979.2008.00194.x]
  • Sue Bowden, Avner Offer. "Household Appliances and the Use of Time: The United States and Britain Since the 1920s." The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Nov., 1994), pp. 725-748 
  • Graciela Chichilnisky.  "The Gender Gap." Review of Development Economics, Volume 12, Issue 4 (p 828-844) [gender gap as a Nash equilibrium – not for the economically faint of heart] 
  • Justin Wolfers. "Diagnosing Discrimination: Stock Returns and Ceo Gender"  Journal of the European Economic Association, Vol. 4, No. 2/3, Papers and Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Congress of the European Economic Association (Apr. - May, 2006), pp. 531-541 
  • Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn. "The Gender Pay Gap," The Economists' Voice (June 2007). [doi: 10.2202/1553-3832.1190]
  • Claudia Goldin. "The Long Road to the Fast Track: Career and Family." The Annals Of The American Academy Of Political And Social Science. 2004 596 (2004): 20-35.  [doi: 10.1177/0002716204267959]
  • Claudia D. Goldin. "The Role of World War II in the Rise of Women's Employment." The American Economic Review, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Sep., 1991), pp. 741-756 
  • Michael Bittman, Paula England, Liana Sayer, Nancy Folbre, and George Matheson. "When Does Gender Trump Money?: Bargaining and Time in Household Work." American Journal of Sociology 109 (2003):186-214. 

X. What role does ideology play in determining the relations between men and women?

Ideology is near the center of almost all efforts to explain gender inequalities.  People's conceptions of masculinity and femininity, ideas concerning the fairness of differential treatment  or expectations of women and men, internalized schema that evoke different judgments of women's and men's actions, rules about proper male and female behavior applied to children – all these and more concern the influence of ideology on gender identities, differential treatment of women and men, and the organization and persistence of gender inequality.  Conversely, each ideological belief that symbolizes, legitimates, invokes, guides, induces, or helps sustain gender inequality is itself a product of gender inequality.  To untangle these complex causal interdependencies, we must always attend carefully to two kinds of distinctions.  First, we must consistently recognize differences in levels of social organization, including, among others, societal structures and culture, organizations, social networks, social processes, and individual actors.  While it is tempting to treat ideological beliefs as diffuse entities unconnected to identifiable people, organizations, or structures, the analytical results are poor.  Second, we must consistently distinguish between contemporaneous causes (e.g., the ways that internalized schema can influence interactions) and asynchronous or historical causes (e.g., the ways that changes in domestic production  induce different ideas about women's place).  Causal arguments about ideology consider it as both an effect of gender inequality and a cause of gender inequality, although it is ideology's potential role as a contributing cause that stands out as more theoretically important.

• Analytical Task
  • The general analytical problem. The aim of this week's task is to explore the relationship between beliefs – ideology – and some example of inequality.  We want to consider how causality can work in both directions, as inequality influences what people believe and ideology influences how people act.
  • To begin, choose one aspect or component of gender inequality.  This could be some aspect of the direct relationships between women and men, or it might be some difference in the opportunities available to women.  Examples include the way that women overall select less prestigious fields of study than men in college, that higher education used to be restricted for women, that women are objects of sex trafficking, that male professional sports have much higher status, or the different kinds of restaurants that use male vs. female waiters.  You might try to be a bit creative. It can be helpful to focus your discussion using a concrete instance of that type of inequality with which you are familiar. 
  • Contents of the analysis.  The goal is to work through the various ways that ideas and expectations are involved in the causal processes surrounding gender inequality using the chosen example to do this at a more concrete level.  The purpose of the task specification that follows is to help you to be systematic about this.  Use this schematic outline as a starting point.
    1. 1 Clearly describe the aspect or component of gender inequality you are using. (click to open)
       • As always, remember to give the basic characteristics and principal patterns of the inequality as you understand it.  Among other possibilities, this will normally include: (1) describe what is unequal; (2) describe what this inequality looks like, how it is experienced, or how it has its impact in social life; (3) assess how the distribution appears or is manifest in the world, how we would recognize the differences between more or less of it, and how it is currently distributed).
       • The goal is to ensure the reader (and you) clearly understand what makes up or defines the inequality you are focused on, and what specific examples of that inequality you will use in your analysis. 
    2. 2 Describe the principal ideological beliefs or ideas that seem relevant to the inequality being examined. (click to open)
       • While identifying the relevant beliefs is obviously crucial, it can also be difficult.  The range of potentially relevant beliefs may be very large, so we have to exercise judgment about which are most important
       • It may help to distinguish beliefs that motivate the practice of this aspect of gender inequality from those that legitimate it. Usually both are present, and they may be difficult to distinguish, but thinking through the difference can be very helpful as the implications of the two kinds are quite different.
       • It is crucial to consider the actions and ideas of both men and women.  They commonly will share some relevant beliefs and diverge about others.  Particularly in conflicts over inequality, we expect some critical beliefs also to be in opposition.
       • Consider also whether different beliefs motivate or legitimate this type of inequality in different times, places, or circumstances.   That is, you want to decide what characteristics of the beliefs connected to this inequality are fairly consistent across various concrete instances of this type of inequality and what sort of beliefs differ across instances.  For example, the beliefs that motivated male resistance to women entering "male" occupations may have varied by the status of the occupation and by the time period women began to enter.
       • Consider how much people agree about the important beliefs.  When is the consensus high or low, what causes it to be high or low, and what difference does the degree of agreement make?  In particular, do people dispute some aspects of the beliefs relevant to this type of inequality, such that the dispute affects the inequality or informs us about it?  Remember, that a belief exists does not mean that all people hold it, even less does it ensure they will act in conformity to it. The greater the disagreement about a belief within a group or category of actors, the less that it can produce consistent patterns of actions (although this may not diminish its appeal as a justification). 
       • Beliefs have a variety of other variable characteristics that can be important to analyzing their significance. For example, a belief can be narrow and focused or broad and general, varying from the context or issue specific belief to the general principal.  A belief can be so salient and closely held that people refer to it all the time or so insignificant and loosely held that it plays a role only when forced to the forefront.
    3. 3 Assess the effects of these beliefs. (click to open)
       • Consider the social significance or function of the gender inequality related beliefs. We can try to judge the effects of beliefs by comparing how people would behave if beliefs were different, using either real or hypothetical alternatives. 
       • Although beliefs exist only by being held by individuals, we generally want to think of beliefs as cultural phenomena. The beliefs that concern us are those preserved and imposed by cultures or acquired as the common effect of shared or parallel experiences. People are prone to all kinds of idiosyncratic beliefs, but only shared beliefs have social effect.
       • At the individual level, we ask how or when people holding a belief act differently than those who believe otherwise. At the social level, we ask how the presence of those beliefs in a group or circumstance has social consequences -- such as influencing the structure of organizations, the prevailing legal system, or direction of historical changes.
       • What kind of effect and how much effect we attribute to a belief will depend in part on what we choose as the alternate beliefs for comparison.   Reasonable alternatives might include: beliefs observed to exist in more egalitarian (or more unequal) circumstances, reversal of beliefs about women and men (such as believing women are better at math - often implausible in reality, but potentially clarifying as an imaginary experiment), the absence of any such beliefs (that is, people have no expectations about something, such as whether men or women will be more nurturing), or the presence of some reasonable hypothetical alternative beliefs.
       • As usual, we want to give some thought to both women and men - considering how each sex is affected, considering beliefs about both sexes, and considering what each sex believes.  Typically, we expect to find women and men share many beliefs, but are sharply divided on others.    We also want to consider how the effects of the beliefs might vary depending on the context or other mediating influences.
       • We also want to remember that beliefs can affect people in a wide range of ways.  Beliefs can affect judgments, motives, aspirations, quality of experience, and so forth.  Again, the point is not to include everything.  Instead, we want to recognize that deciding what is important is an analytical judgment; it should not simply be to talk about whatever we happened to think about first. We are trying to figure out what beliefs really make a difference to the strength, durability, or form of gender inequality.
    4. 4 Try to explain how the relevant beliefs come to exist and why they persist. (click to open)
       • Thus, for the example of inequality being examined, we are in part trying to explain how beliefs or ideas might arise as a result of the presence of the inequality that they legitimate and motivate.  This is our central goal, and it is difficult.  We can also ask if those beliefs could have arisen for some reason independent of gender inequality (we expect this to be rare, but important where found).
       • It can help to do a hypothetical experiment.  Consider an imaginary circumstance (which might have a real historical counterpart) where the relevant aspect of gender inequality did not exist, nor did the related beliefs – then at some point in time this type of gender inequality came into existence.  Then try to think through how ideas would change as a result of the emergence of this facet of gender inequality.  Consider what issues might arise if this type of inequality came to exist, but the beliefs still did not, and how might the response to such issues lead to new beliefs. Think about both women and men trying to make sense of the unequal circumstances, and trying to mold the perception of reality and justice to fit their circumstances.
       • To make the analysis more concrete, see if you can provide evidence or observations about real circumstances where this type of inequality is minimal (different cultures, different historical periods, different parts of society).  Assess how the beliefs under minimal inequality compare to those where it is high.
       • It is a good idea to consider under what conditions, if any, would the beliefs associated with a facet of gender inequality exist without the presence of this facet of gender inequality. That is, could similar or analogous beliefs appear with different kinds of inequality or under conditions of little inequality.  The first possibility is critical, because it suggests beliefs due to the presence of inequality per se, not dependent on the type of inequality.  The second possibility suggests the prospect of beliefs hijacked from conditions distinct from inequality, then converted to some service to reinforce or challenge inequality.  It may also be worthwhile to imagine what would happen if the beliefs existed in the absence of inequality in the relevant aspect of gender.  Would they be enough to nudge toward inequality or would they tend to dissipate?
       • It is also a good idea to consider how people acquire the relevant beliefs.  Are they part of general cultural expectations, are the transferred in specific contexts, or do people generate them from experience rather than learning them from others?  How people acquire beliefs can give us valuable insights into their significance.
       • Finally, ask what happens if some people question or reject the beliefs? This question applies to both women and men.  The mechanisms to ensure acceptance and conformity are crucial to the preservation and effectiveness of beliefs.
    5. 5 Finally, after completing the steps in the analysis above, try to give an overall assessment about the significance of ideology to the facet of gender inequality you are considering. 
  • Additional Notes 
    • Throughout, be careful to distinguish between empirical claims and moral claims.  Both kinds of beliefs are important.  And they may be confused or overlapping rather than neatly distinguished in real life.  Still, they are crucially different.  Similarly, distinguish between the explanation of beliefs and the justification of beliefs.
    • Do try to introduce appropriate connections between the argument(s) you present and the readings.  Consider not only the common readings from this week, but also past readings and optional ones from this week that seem particularly relevant. 
• Common Readings
  • Ridgeway, Cecilia L., and Shelley J. Correll. " Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations." Gender & Society 18, no. 4 (2004): 510-31.
  • Down So Long:  Disputed Ideals: Ideologies of Domesticity and Feminist Rebellion
  • Paula England. "The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled." Gender & Society 2010 24 (2): 149-166
  • Francesca M. Cancian. "The Feminization of Love." Signs, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Summer, 1986), pp. 692-709
  • Robert Max Jackson. Destined for Equality: Ch. 4 - "Institutional Individualism"
  • Döring, Nicola, Anne Reif, and Sandra Poeschl. "How Gender-Stereotypical Are Selfies? A Content Analysis and Comparison with Magazine Adverts." Computers in Human Behavior 55, Part B (2016): 955-62. [doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.10.001] [read: 955-57, 61; look at photos throughout]
  • Young, Isaac F., and Daniel Sullivan. "Competitive Victimhood: A Review of the Theoretical and Empirical Literature." Current Opinion in Psychology 11 (2016): 30-34. [doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.04.004]
• Recommended Readings
  
  • Nakamura, Mayumi, and Mito Akiyoshi. "What Determines the Perception of Fairness Regarding Household Division of Labor between Spouses?." Plos One 10, no. 7 (Jul 2015). [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132608]
  • Davis, Shannon N., and Theodore N. Greenstein. "Gender Ideology: Components, Predictors, and Consequences." Annual Review of Sociology 35, no. 1 (2009): 87-105. [doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-115920]
  • Judith Lorber. "Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology." Gender and Society, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 568-581
  • Faye Ginsburg. "Procreation Stories: Reproduction, Nurturance, and Procreation in Life Narratives of Abortion Activists." American Ethnologist, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Nov., 1987), pp. 623-636
  • Kristin Luker. "Contraceptive Risk Taking and Abortion: Results and Implications of a San Francisco Bay Area Study." Studies in Family Planning, Vol. 8, No. 8 (Aug., 1977), pp. 190-196; and "The War Between the Women." Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Mar. - Apr., 1984), pp. 105-110
  • Clem Brooks and Catherine Bolzendahl. "The Transformation of US Gender Role Attitudes: Cohort Replacement, Social-Structural Change, and Ideological Learning."  Social Science Research Volume:  33  Issue:  1  (2004 Mar):  106 - 133
• Related Readings
  
  • Catherine I Bolzendahl, Daniel J Myers.. "Feminist Attitudes and Support for Gender Equality: Opinion Change in Women and Men, 1974-1998." Social Forces, vol. 83, no. 2 (Dec 2004): 759-789
  • Thornton, Arland; Young-DeMarco, Linda, "Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes toward Family Issues in the United States: The 1960s through the 1990s." Journal of Marriage and the Family, vol. 63, no. 4, pp. 1009-1037, Nov 2001 
  • Emily W. Kane, Mimi Schippers. "Men's and Women's Beliefs about Gender and Sexuality." Gender and Society, Vol. 10, No. 5 (Oct., 1996), pp. 650-665
  • Eric D. Widmer, Judith Treas, Robert Newcomb. "Attitudes toward Nonmarital Sex in 24 Countries." The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 349-358... [jstor: 3813111]
  • Bem, S, L, (1994) Defending The Lenses of Gender. Psychological Inquiry, 5, 97-101.
  • Frable, D. E., & Bem, S. L. (1985). If You Are Gender Schematic, All Members Of The Opposite Sex Look Alike. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 459-468. [doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.49.2.459]

XI.   How can we make sense of feminism's fate and role in contemporary U.S.?

Today, feminism is both extolled and condemned, often by people whose orientations toward feminism seem to defy their interests.  Both the popular press and scholarship have devoted a lot of effort seeking to make sense of people's beliefs about feminism and equality, but these efforts have done little to reduce the disagreements.

• Analytical Task
  
  • The goal of this task is to explore what young people think about feminism today and to attempt to explain these beliefs.
  • As a prelude, you should interview some female and some male acquaintances about feminism.
    • Use your own judgment about who to interview and how many.  You are trying to get enough "data" to serve as the basis for your analysis.
    • Also use your own judgment about how to conduct your interviews and what to ask.  However, at a minimum try to include: 1) how they would define feminism, 2) what kinds of the people they know do they consider feminist, 3) what they think is true about gender inequality/equality today, 4) whether or not they consider themselves feminist and why, 5) whether or not they consider themselves committed to gender equality.
  • Based on these interviews and your pre-existing observations, write a descriptive assessment of young, educated American's orientation toward feminism.
  • Prepare a provisional causal analysis of these current attitudes toward feminism and gender equality in your reference population. Try to do a reasoned analysis, taking into account the readings for this topic.
  • Causal analyses always hinge on the choice of comparison.  Among others, you might consider: 1) the differences between now and the past, 2) the differences between women and men, 3) the differences between those who identify as feminist and those who do not, 3) the difference between people like you and people unlike you
• Common Readings
  • Destined for Equality: Women's Rejection of Subordination
  • Nancy Burns and Katherine Gallagher.  "Public Opinion on Gender Issues: The Politics of Equity and Roles." Annual Review of Political Science, 2010, Vol. 13: 425-443 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.12.040507.142213]
  • Jo Freeman. "Political Organization in the Feminist Movement." Acta Sociologica, Vol. 18, No. 2/3 (1975), pp. 222-244 
  • Marshall, Susan E. "Ladies against Women: Mobilization Dilemmas of Antifeminist Movements." Social Problems 32, no. 4 (1985): 348-62. [doi:10.1525/sp.1985.32.4.03a00040]
  • A selection of popular/mass media discussions of feminism's current dilemmas:
    •  Susan J. Douglas. "Girls Gone Anti-Feminist"
    • Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett and Holly Baxter. "The Five Main Issues Facing Modern Feminism"
    • Hanna Rosin. "The Patriarchy Is Dead. Feminists, accept it."
    • Liza Mundy. "Why Do Some Feminists Get Uneasy When Women Make Progress?"
    • Alexandra Petri.  "Feminism is dead! Long live feminism!"
• Recommended Readings
  • Carl N. Degler. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman on the Theory and Practice of Feminism." American Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring, 1956), pp. 21-39   
  • Emily Stoper, Roberta Ann Johnson. "The Weaker Sex & the Better Half: The Idea of Women's Moral Superiority in the American Feminist Movement." Polity, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Winter, 1977), pp. 192-217  [jstor: 3234258]
  • ...
• Related Readings
  • Holly J. McCammon, Courtney Sanders Muse, Harmony D. Newman, and Teresa M. Terrell. "Movement Framing and Discursive Opportunity Structures: The Political Successes of the U.S. Women's Jury Movements." American Sociological Review 2007 72(5): 725-749.   
  • Elsie Clews Parsons. "Feminism and Conventionality." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 56, Women in Public Life (Nov., 1914), pp. 47-53 
  • Catherine Hakim. "Five Feminist Myths about Women's Employment." The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 429-455
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XII.   How have political processes and structures sustained men's and women's relative status?

As structure and as actor, the state has been unavoidably central to ongoing practice of gender inequality, to its persistence, and to changes in the form and amount of gender inequality.

States or governments have power. Through the military and police, a state can enforce conformity to its rules, repel and punish challenges from the scale of individual acts to collective rebellions, and by threat, implicit or explicit, deter rebellions from appearing. Through the law, regulations, and bureaucratic policies, a state can define what constitutes acceptable or legitimate behavior at all levels of social organization. Through economic policies of taxation, expenditures, and redistributions (such as welfare policies or agricultural supports), a state influences the relative economic status of different groups.

By acting differently toward groups with regard to any of these aspects of government power, a state can create, reinforce, or exacerbate social inequalities. Analogously, a state can, in theory, obstruct, destabilize, or diminish social inequality by using its power in ways that are inconsistent with social inequalities. States determine, influence, legitimize, and sanction rights and opportunities; they may do so in more or less egalitarian ways.

When significant, enduring, social inequality exists, those privileged by that form of inequality will normally have more influence over the state than do those disadvantaged by the inequality, and the overall effect of state policies will reinforce the exercise and persistence of the inequality. A fundamental problem for all state theories is who or what decides state policies and actions. To some degree, those "in" the state (elected, appointed, hired, or appropriated) make decisions based on their interests and outlooks as members of the state apparatus. To some degree, state actors respond to the influence of power brokers outside the state, such as the economically powerful. In either case, when making policy or strategic planning decisions, those influencing state actions are in part responding to what they perceive will be the responses of all actors in the nation affected by those decisions.  States, or the political actors who comprise the government, also have their own interests, most notably preserving their power, and these interests are not automatically consistent with the interests of dominant social groups.

These political processes may support and enforce gender inequality, passively permit it, or oppose gender inequality (as is true with any form of social inequality). They may do any combination of these with respect to different aspects of gender inequality.  Sustaining influence over political processes is a fundamental feature and goal of socially dominant groups and the long monopoly of men over political power has both demonstrated and sustained gender inequality.  Yet, government actions have also contributed to the decline of gender inquality over the past two centuries.

• Analytical Task
  
  • You have been hired by the newly elected President of the United States (or the analogous top political position in another country that you prefer to examine).  One of the new President’s main goals for her years in office is to use government power to improve gender inequality and the status of women.  Your job is to recommend toward what specific goals she should focus her efforts.
  • You may recommend new legislation (or the removal of old), new administrative strategies such as who gets appointed, new executive policies (for example, rules for the military) that are within the President’s power without legislation, concerted efforts to influence public opinion or state level governance.  In short, you can consider the entire range of actions available to a President.
  • You should propose at least three distinct initiatives that you believe could serve this purpose.
  • Choose the strategy you believe holds the most promise.  For this strategy, you must provide an analytical justification. Your justification should consider the following:
    • At what aspects of gender inequality is the policy aimed? 
    • Include a brief analysis of this inequality that explains what is unequal, how great is the inequality, who does it effect, how widely is it recognized, how it has (or has not) changed over time, and what seem to be the principal causes.
    • Describe how have government actions (or inaction) influenced this inequality in the past.
    • Show why we should expect that it will be easy or hard to carry out the strategy and how the possible difficulties reflect the influence or effects of gender inequality.
    • Explain how the proposed strategy can be expected to alleviate gender inequality.  This explanation should connect directly to the causal explanation of the inequality being diminished.
  • In short, you should propose several strategies by which a government could promote greater gender equality, then provide an analytic appraisal of the strategy you deem best.  This appraisal should stress the causes of relevant facets of gender inequality, how the proposed strategy will affect that causal process, and how gender inequality has a causal influence on government policy that must be countered to implement the policy.  Do not forget to provide a historical context.
• Common Readings
  • Destined for Equality: Citizenship: Gaining Equality from the State
  • Joyce Gelb, Marian Lief Palley. "Women and Interest Group Politics: A Comparative Analysis of Federal Decision-Making." The Journal of Politics, Vol. 41, No. 2 (May, 1979), pp. 362-392. [doi: 10.2307/2129770]
  • Pamela Paxton, Sheri Kunovich, Melanie M. Hughes. "Gender in Politics." Annual Review of Sociology 2007 33, 263-284
  • Down So Long:  The Reproduction of Economic and Political Power
• Recommended Readings
  • Lynne Haney. "Homeboys, Babies, Men in Suits: The State and the Reproduction of Male Dominance." American Sociological Review, Vol. 61, No. 5 (Oct., 1996), pp. 759-778
  • Deniz Kandiyoti, " Bargaining with Patriarchy." Gender and Society," Vol. 2, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), pp. 274-290
  • Torben Iversen, Frances Rosenbluth. "The Political Economy of Gender: Explaining Cross-National Variation in the Gender Division of Labor and the Gender Voting Gap."  American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Jan., 2006), pp. 1-19 [doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00166.x]
  • Vicky Randall. "Legislative Gender Quotas and Indian Exceptionalism: The Travails of the Women's Reservation Bill." Comparative Politics, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Oct., 2006), pp. 63-82 [jstor: 20434021]
• Related Readings
  • Guillaume R. Fréchette, Francois Maniquet, Massimo Morelli. "Incumbents' Interests and Gender Quotas."American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Oct., 2008), pp. 891-909 [jstor: 25193856]
  • Lynne A. Haney. "Feminist State Theory: Applications to Jurisprudence, Criminology, and the Welfare State." Annual Review of Sociology 26:641-666 (2000) [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.641]
  • Richard L. Fox, Jennifer L. Lawless. "Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run for Office."American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Apr., 2004), pp. 264-280 [jstor: 1519882].

XIIb.   How do the media influence or reflect gender inequality?

Commentators often point toward media influence when they try to explain contemporary gender inequality. Theories of media alert us that we must always consider reciprocal causal processes. While any individual may appear only to be the object of media influence, the content and impact of media depend greatly on the existing culture and social structure. The relationship of the media to the collective market effect of consumers may be compared to the relationship between elected public officials and voters. Also, consumers have considerable freedom to choose which media outlets to give their attention and people selectively interpret and judge the media to which they are exposed. All of this makes the relationship between what is portrayed in the media and what occur in the "real" world rather complex.

• Analytical Task
  
  • Select one kind of popular/mass media, such as magazines or the cinema, or, alternatively, a form of popular culture thought to have an analogous impact, such as popular music.
  • Prepare a simple comparative analysis of current examples to examples from around 1980, a third of a century ago.
    • Choose a small, reasonable sample from the two periods.  For example, the samples might be advertisements from three magazines present in both periods, or the female and male protagonists of top earning movies, or the lyrics of the highest rated songs.
    • Using the dimensions or characteristics identified in the readings, (or analogous ones that better fit the media you are assessing), characterize the differences in the ways women and men are portrayed in the two periods.
  • Given the results of your comparisons, show how the data you observe might be explained by (1) theories stressing the influence of the media on gender expectations, evaluations, and behavior, or (2) theories stressing the media as reflecting gender inequality, or (3) theories stressing market segmentation (audiences choose among media offerings and media makers aim at audience segments.
  • Prepare a simple, reasonable response to the questions, "What is the basic causal relationship between mass media and gender inequality?" and "How is the correspondence between media portrayals and real-life gender inequality sustained over time as gender inequality changes?
• Common Readings
  • Julia T. Wood.  "Gendered Media: The Influence of Media on Views of Gender." From Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture by Julie Wood.
  • Mee-Eun Kang. "The Portrayal Of Women’s Images In Magazine Advertisements: Goffman’s Gender Analysis Revisited."  Vol 37, no. 11-12  (Dec 1997: , Volume 37, Issue 11-12, pp 979-996)
  • P. Dahlgren.  "Mass Media: Introduction and Schools of Thought." International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
  • How Gender-Stereotypical Are Selfies? A Content Analysis and Comparison with Magazine Adverts." Computers in Human Behavior 55, Part B (2// 2016): 955-62. [read: 955-57, 61; look at photos throughout]
• Recommended Readings
  • ... .
• Related Readings
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XIII.   What does the future hold?

Where do we go from here? Predicting the future is the ultimate challenge for causal analyses.  To have any potential to see into the future, we need a sound and thorough causal theory, one that can encompass the range of possible influences simultaneously.  We also need to cope with the unpredictable potential effects of processes and events that are outside the boundaries of our theories.  These are extremely difficult conditions to meet.  But the need to make some sense of the future weighs on us.  Will gender inquality continue to decline, and greater gender equality spread throughout the world?  Are some aspects of gender inquality particularly resistant to reduction, and if so why?  Could change stagnate?  Behind such concerns are two principal questions.  What has caused the long-term pattern of declining gender inequality?  And what has preserved aspects of gender inequality in the face of these accumulating changes?  Combining the answers to these two questions with an effort to project the relevant influences into the future, is the basis for trying to understand the possibilities for the future.  Behind this also lies another analytical question with moral overtones: what does gender equality really mean?

• Analytical Task 1
  • Select two types of inequality, both important, one that you believe to be moving toward greater equality at a relatively high rate, the other that you believe is moving toward equality at a relatively slow rate (or is stalled or is moving backwards)
    • for each of these two types, describe what is the inequality (how are women and men unequal, which women and men experience it, how do things differ when this inequality is high from when it is low)
    • describe the evidence and logic that suggests one type is declining relatively quickly and the other relatively slowly
  • Try to explain why the two different rates of movement toward equality
    • For each, consider what processes, conditions, interests, and the like propel the movement toward greater equality
    • For each, consider what circumstances, activities, and the like obstruct the movement toward greater equality
    • Try to explain how and why the balance between the causes propelling greater equality and the causes sustaining existing inequality differ between the two types of gender inequality
• Analytical Task 2
  • The general analytical problem.  Using two plausible future scenarios about gender inequality, assess what processes or conditions will decide which future alternative comes to pass.
  • The task has the following main parts
    1. Select two of three alternatives to use for the analysis: highest conceivable level of equality, highest possibility of inequality, most likely conditions.  Essentially this means that we compare the two extreme possibilities, or we compare what we think most likely with one of the extreme possibilities.
    2. For each of the two selected alternatives, give a clear description of what the expected level of gender inequality means.  How severe will be major components of gender inequality, how consistent will different aspects of gender inequality be with each other, how consistent will these patterns be in society, and so on.  (It might help to look back over the range of topics covered above.)
    3. The center of the analysis will be to provide a causal argument about what causal conditions and sequence of developments could lead to each of the two alternatives.  To this end, we must consider the full range of causal influences that we have examined previously.
  • Thinking tools.
    • To consider any future path, we must make assumptions about: (1) how far into the future, (2) in what society and with respect to what social groups, and (3) what other changes might occur, altering the cultural, political, and economic environment. 
      • For our purposes, let us set the future to be about one and two generations, that is when your children are your current age, and then when their children reach a similar age.  The key tradeoff with setting the distance into the future is simple: the further we go into the future the more interesting and significant are the social changes but equally the more obscure become the realistic possibilities.
      • Let us focus on our own society as a whole, referencing distinctive social categories as needed. 
      • Similarly, let us assume that the cultural, political, and economic environments are reasonably stable, with the expectation that existing long term trends will continue into the future.  We will ignore the potential for significant structural changes and historical "shocks" such as economic recessions and wars.  Of course, the further we look into the future, the more speculative and fallible such assumptions become, but our purpose is not to predict the actual future.
    • Looking forward, the future is always uncertain, however well we may explain it once it becomes the past.  One way to make the future more amenable to analysis is to simplify it into what we believe are the principal alternative futures that matter to us.  Probably the simplest technique it to focus on one characteristic and consider the most extreme plausible possibilities.
    • With this in mind, let us try to analyze the future of gender inequality by contrasting stark alternatives.  To begin consider three possibilities:
      • First, the highest level of gender equality that we can imagine.  This might be the current state of inequality, or it might be the highest level of inequality now seen in any comparable society, or it might be a much higher level of inequality.  The problem here is to imagine what is the greatest amount of future inequality we can
      • Second, the highest level of gender inequality that we can imagine.
      • And, third, the most likely level of gender inequality that we expect.  This could coincide with either one of the previous, but will commonly be somewhere between them.
    • For deciding the plausibility of any future circumstances, we want to remember that there are two kinds of limiting conditions we must consider.  First, functional plausibility, asking if that level of inequality is feasible in the context of what we perceive to be the relevant surrounding circumstances.  For a simple example, a social custom of leaving all property to sons is largely unworkable in a society with a low reproduction rate because so many families have no sons.  Second, transition plausibility, asking if a conceivable historical path of development could lead from present circumstances to the future scenario.  For a simple example, it might be possible to conceive how American society could have functioned with full gender equality in 1900, but it would extremely difficult to suggest any plausible way that condition could have emerged under any conceivable historical sequence from the social organization of American society in 1850. 
  • Bringing it together.  Our goal here is not to predict the future of gender inequality, but to examine what sequence of causal conditions seem likely determinants of that future.  We are trying to discover defensible "if, then" arguments.  To do this, we are starting by imagining possible futures, then working backwards from them to find paths from the present to those futures,  then asserting what else must occur for those paths to materialize.  We should not forget, there may be more than one path to an imagined future and more than one set of causal conditions that could lead us there. For each alternative being considered, we want to analyze why and how it might reasonably occur.
    As an optional extra, you can offer an analysis of which alternative seems more likely and why.
• Common Readings
  • Paula England.  "Toward Gender Equality: Progress and Bottlenecks," in Declining Significance of Gender?, (ed. Francine Blau, Mary Brinton, David Grusky), 2007; also Paula England. "The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled." Gender & Society 2010 24: 149-166.  [doi: 10.1177/0891243210361475]
  • Cecilia L. Ridgeway.  "Gender as an Organizing Force in Social Relations: Implications for the Future of Inequality," in Declining Significance of Gender?, (ed. Francine Blau, Mary Brinton, David Grusky), 2007
  • Robert Max Jackson.  "Opposing Forces: How, Why, and When Will Gender Inequality Disappear?," in Declining Significance of Gender?, (ed. Francine Blau, Mary Brinton, David Grusky), 2007
• Recommended Readings
  • Maria Charles and Karen Bradley.  "Indulging Our Gendered Selves? Sex Segregation by Field of Study in 44 Countries."  American Journal of Sociology 114:4 (2009), 924-976  [doi: pdf/10.1086/595942]
  • Richard Breen and Lynn Prince Cooke. "The Persistence of the Gendered Division of Domestic Labour."  European Sociological Review 2005 21(1): 43-57 [doi: 10.1093/esr/jci003]
  • Luisa Escriche, Gonzalo Olcina, and Rosario Sánchez. "Gender Discrimination And Intergenerational Transmission Of Preferences." Oxford Economic Papers (2004) 56(3): 485-511
  • Gerda Neyer and Dorothea Rieck. "Moving Towards Gender Equality." Ch. 7 in How Generations and Gender Shape Demographic Change United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Conference "How Generations and Gender Shape Demographic Change," 14 to 16 May 2008 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva 
  • ...
• Related Readings
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