Sociology 699F: Gender & Social Change

Introduction

• A research seminar
• Need to get into the research process
• Vehicles:
• Research assistantships
• Masters thesis
• Seminar papers
• Dissertation (too late!)
• Obstacles:
• Choosing topics
• Finding and organizing data
• Getting advice
• Research seminars as solution to this need
• Thus: not much substantive content
• Thus: depends on some methodological background
• A common focus: micro-macro interactions in gender inequality


• Introductions

 
• Examples of macro-level gender changes in the United States:
• The gender earnings gap
• The gender gap in college graduation
• Occupational segregation
• Attitudes towards women in politics


• Questions:
• What happened that changed in the 1970s?
• Systemic change: Contextual effects?


• Macro-micro relationships:
• Most recent research has been micro oriented
• Exception: neighborhood effects literature
• Market differences: job mismatches
• Social networks: contacts for finding jobs
• Institutions: schools, churches, government agencies
• Culture: norms and expectations
• Areas as a way of testing macro level effects
• Regional labor markets: metropolitan areas
• Districts in India
• Countries in the world
• Years over time (but some disadvantages)
• Disadvantages of areas as a macro-level effect


• Multilevel models
• Well suited to study contextual effects
• Developed by school based researchers
• Hierarchical models: nesting
• Model IV-DV relationships as well as levels of the DV
• e.g., gender associations


• Schedule
• Calendar
• Day of week
• Readings
• "Next" week
• Readings: Huber and Mason
• Priorities: 2 most important macro causes
• Priorities: 2 most important micro outcomes
• Projects
• Data