This course will enlist you in current research at the University of Maryland. Research can be exciting, tedious, rewarding, frustrating, challenging, time-consuming, and uplifting. Pushing the boundaries of human knowledge is an especially important endeavor, and I hope you all learn to value the challenges as much as your instructor does.

Not everybody is well suited to the uncertainties and frustrations of research. If you are intrigued by the possibility of discovering new ideas, then research can become addictive, a true calling. But if you're just not into new discoveries or become anxious with the uncertainties of research, that's fine too — but you are probably signed up for the wrong course. If you're unsure, stick around and see if we can convince you.

Our focus is on "The End of the Gender Revolution", sometimes called more optimistically, "The Stalled Revolution." Trends in the United States show that most of the great advances made in gender equality during the 1970s and 1980s came to an unexpected halt in the middle of the 1990s. We don't know why. (Actually, many observers aren't sure that it even happened — more on that later). If we are extremely lucky and hardworking, by the end of the semester we may be closer to an answer why so much changed in the mid-1990s. (But we may also end up even more confused than when we began — that's always the gamble in doing research).

Our guiding hunch will be that something happened in American popular culture in the 1980s and 1990s that reduced Americans' emphasis on achieving gender equality. Our work will be designed to specify exactly what that something is. Cultural explanations are not the only or even the most common answers in sociology, but we will see why most other ("structural") explanations don't work.

Fortunately, we can benefit from the work of several very smart predecessors who have given us an intriguing list of which parts of the culture changed that eroded support for gender equality. Lists of potential causes are a great start, but we need to test them more rigorously to see which suggestions, if any, bear up to systematic testing. The last time we did this course, we found partial support for these ideas. We have enough evidence to suspect we are on the right track, but not enough evidence to convince others we have a good answer. One goal this semester will be to expand that evidence to reach a firmer conclusion.

Our main goal this semester will be to further develop systematic measures of these cultural themes and to trace their changes over time. If their time trends coincide (or better, precede) the trends in gender equality, we have some support for their role as causes of "the end of the gender revolution". This would be only weak evidence — but it would be a first step. We will have much to discuss about the nature of evidence and "proof" in social science later.

Our main tool for testing these cultural ideas will be systematic content analysis. We will concentrate on the content of newspapers but may also look at other sources (magazines, TV, films, novels) as well. Newspapers have the great advantage of being readily available electronically through LexisNexis available from the UoM library: http://researchport.umd.edu/func=databases

• Required readings
• Content analysis exercises
• Term Paper and Poster

Grading:

If you have a documented disability, the Sociology Department is experienced in making accommodations. Please contact me by the end of the first week of classes, and we'll discuss those arrangements.

The web address of this home page is http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/vanneman/socy428