Sociology 699F: Gender & Social Change

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Gender and social change

This is a research seminar designed for a small number of students to work intensively on focused research projects. Our goal will be for everybody to complete a publishable paper to submit to an annual meeting or journal by the end of the semester. Students will develop a topic from the initial literature review through to the best presentation of results.

Substantively, our focus is on how systems of gender inequality change. We are primarily interested in macro-level questions about what determines the quantity and types of gender inequality in society. For instance, in the United States, both the gender wage gap and occupational gender segregation have been declining fairly steadily since the mid 1970s. However, throughout the third quarter of the century, there had been almost no change in these gender inequalities. What changed in the 1970s that turned around the previous stability?

One clue to these macro-level determinants can sometimes be found in gender differences across areas: for instance, metropolitan areas in the United States; developing countries in the world; or districts in India. Areas offer both research advantages and disadvantages for macro-level analyses of gender inequality. In the course, we will look at both space and time as aspects of macro-level variation, and will entertain other possibilities to investigate changes in gender systems. Student papers, however, should focus on just one type of macro-level variation.

Macro-level variation in gender inequality is best studied when integrated with micro-level variations across individual men and women as well. Thus, my expectation is that student papers will focus on a dimension of gender inequality at both the macro and micro levels. To do this, the seminar will cover basic features of multilevel analyses that permit us to study micro and macro determinants of gender inequality simultaneously. Students registering for the seminar should therefore already be familiar with basic multiple regression.

Data files readily available for research papers.

Seminar projects.

The home page for this course is: http://www.vanneman.umd.edu/socy699F/default.html