Attitudes Toward Women's Work and Family Roles in the United States, 1976-2013 (original) (raw)
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Socius: A Journal of the American Sociological Association, 2019
These figures display gender- and education-related gaps in U.S. gender attitudes from 1977 to 2018. The authors use data from the General Social Survey (N = 57,224) to estimate the historical trajectory of U.S. attitudes about women in politics, familial roles, and working motherhood. Of all attitudes analyzed, Americans hold the most liberal attitudes toward women in politics, with no gender gap and little educational difference on this issue. Attitudes toward familial roles have the largest educational gap but a small gender difference. The gender gap in attitudes toward working motherhood has persisted over time, with women holding more egalitarian attitudes than men. The educational disparity on this issue disappeared during the mid-1990s “stalled gender revolution” but has widened since. Although the “stall” occurred among all gender and educational groups on all four gender attitude measures, the decline was starkest among the college-educated regarding working motherhood.
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Social Science Research, 2009
Using a sample of continuously-married individuals (793 women and 847 men) and their spouses drawn from the first two waves of the NSFH, we examine change in individuals' attitudes about mothers' employment. We investigate hypotheses derived from three models of attitude change: the exposure model, the interest-based model, and the control model. We find support for hypotheses derived from all three. Consistent with exposure hypotheses, the adoption of fundamentalist beliefs reduces egalitarianism, while spouses' egalitarianism and spouses' education are positively related to individuals' own egalitarianism. As predicted in both exposure and interest hypotheses, women's entry into employment is positively related to women's egalitarianism, while wives' occupational prestige is positively related to men's egalitarianism. Congruent with the interest model, the presence of a young child is positively associated with women's egalitarianism. Consistent with the exposure model, the number of children in the home reduces men's egalitarianism, and a traditional division of housework decreases women's egalitarianism. Finally, consistent with the gender ideology discrepancy hypothesis, derived from the control model, individuals whose background, work, and family life are inconsistent with their gender ideology at wave 1 shift their gender ideology at wave 2 in a direction that is more compatible with their background, work, and family life: egalitarians with traditional life patterns at wave 1 are more traditional in their gender ideology at wave 2, and traditionals with egalitarian life patterns at wave 1 are more egalitarian at wave 2. We discuss the implications of these patterns for larger scale change in gender ideology.
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Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2011
Women in Western societies have made enormous gains in education and labor force involvement since the middle of the twentieth century. Various gender differences persist, however. For example, young men and women in the United States continue to differ in their plans for work and family, with women more likely than men to choose careers that will "work around" their family plans (Bridges, 1989). A social constructionist perspective suggests that such differences are the result of societal influences that reinforce traditional gender roles. An evolutionary perspective explains psychological sex differences in work and family priorities as a natural consequence of greater female investment in children over evolutionary history. In the current paper, we test competing predictions about how exposure to college -an environment that encourages gender egalitarianism and individual choice --might moderate the magnitude of male-female differences in work-family plans. We surveyed broad samples of freshmen and seniors enrolled in a public liberal arts university. Sex differences apparent in first-year students' educational aspirations were absent among seniors. However, men and women at both points in college differed sharply in their plans for working when they had young children at home. We discuss our findings in the context of broader concerns about women's status in the workforce.
International Journal of Gender Science and Technology, 2011
The World Economic Forum released its annual Global Gender Gap Report in October 2010. The United States rose 12 places to enter the top 20 for the first time. American women have done quite well in their educational attainment, and they are more likely to be professional workers, although their wages remain at two-thirds of what men doing similar work receive. Yes, the United States is narrowing its gender gap, but the goal of greater equality cannot be realized if we fail to incorporate marriage and partnership concerns as well as family and parenthood issues into the whole picture. Sociologist Kathleen Gerson's new book, The Unfinished Revolution, vividly portrays how the children of the gender revolution are still struggling to attain a work and family balance, a difficult task that their parents were unable to solve. This elegant and powerful book has won acclaim from prominent scholars in the fields of family, work, and gender. As a sociologist of reproduction with a focus on East Asia, I was first drawn to this book because of my interest in the correlation between fertility changes, gender equality, and social institutions suggested by demographic statistical data.
Journal of Social Issues, 2012
A culturally/ethnically diverse sample of 955 students (M = 20.2 years old) at a large U.S. university completed online surveys about their parents' division of labor, trajectories of their mothers' employment, gender role ideology, and beliefs about the costs and benefits of maternal employment for children. Differences in these work-care domains were examined by student gender, culture/ethnicity, acculturation status, and own employment. Generational differences in beliefs about maternal employment also were examined. Propensity score matching reduced selection bias. Asian American students, especially male students and those less acculturated, were more likely to endorse gender role segregation and maternal nonemployment when children are young. Their mothers' employment and own employment status were associated with more positive views about maternal employment. However, students' work-care beliefs have held fairly constant since the 1980s. The views of young adults about career and care may impinge on their success in attaining work-family goals. The more things change, the more they stay the same: Gender, culture, and college students' views about work and family
More mothers are working full-time as serious income earners than ever before, many delaying marriage and having children in favor of securing a certain level of financial stability and independence. In the last fifteen years, however, many of these working mothers are expressing a perceived inability to balance their roles as parent and employee. The data, both qualitative as well as quantitative seems to suggest that women are now working harder and in more roles than they were before the Feminist movement with only slightly more assistance from their partners. These conflicts have led researchers worldwide to pose the question, “has the second wave feminist movement helped or hurt educated working women and their families?”
The 1990s Shift in the Media Portrayal of Working Mothers
Sociological Forum, 2015
A cultural theme of distressed working mothers depicts working mothers as caught between the demands of work and family in an unforgiving institutional context. Susan Faludi first identified this theme as a conservative backlash against feminists' attempts "to have it all." But the same narrative helps support demands for more flexible work-family policies and more significant housework contributions from fathers. We explore this theme by coding 859 newspaper articles sampled from the 1981-2009 New York Times. Articles discussing problems for working mothers increased in the mid-1990s and have continued increasing into the 21st century. Other themes about problems and benefits for working mothers show quite different trends. There is also an unexpected mid-1990s shift in attention from problems working mothers are having at home to problems at work. The increase in the distressed working mother theme coincides with the mid-1990s stall in the gender revolution. The simultaneity of the cultural, economic, political and attitude trends suggests that the rise of the distressed working mother theme and the stall in the gender revolution have mutually reinforced each other over the last two decades.