Sociology

Making sure children in military families are not left behind

By Ron Avi Astor

Imagine attending nine schools before graduating from high school. Dealing with the emotional strain of having to end and restart friendships every year. Never establishing a lasting relationship with a favorite teacher. Being barred from participating in a favorite sport because you don’t meet residency requirements.

Further imagine the frustration of falling academically behind because completed courses in one state aren’t credited in another. And all this is happening while mom or dad is on his or her fourth tour of military duty overseas.

On Equal Pay Day, Busting 4 Top Myths About the Wage Gap

By Mariko Lin Chang

This year’s Equal Pay Day falls on April 12, marking how far into 2011 the average woman must work in order to earn what the average man had by the end of 2010. In the 15 years since Equal Pay Day was established, the gender wage gap has barely budged, moving from 74 percent in 1996 to 77 percent in 2010. This amounts to a three-cent increase in women’s wages for every dollar earned by men. Given that women make up half of the workforce, the gender wage gap does not generate the outrage that it should, as is clear from the failure of the Paycheck Fairness Act last November.

Who’s winning in the sexual market?

As most of you probably know by now, there’s a new stage in life – emerging adulthood, or for the purposes of this post, the unmarried young adult. Marriage is getting pushed off (26 is the average age for women, 28 for men) which means…more premarital sex than ever!
According to sociologists, emerging adults are all part of a sexual market in which the “cost” of sex for men and women in heterosexual relationships is pretty different. Out of this disparity has risen the theory of “sexual economics,” which I recently

The mind works in mysterious ways: unconscious race bias & Obama

By Gregory S. Parks & Matthew W. Hughey

On Tuesday, January 25, 2010, Arab television network Alhurra interviewed Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA). During the interview, Congressman Moran stated that Republicans made big gains this past November because “a lot of people in this country . . . don’t want to be governed by an African American.” To some, these statements were not only controversial, but false. This is because we live in a supposedly post-racial America since

Does marriage close the wealth gap between men and women?

Some may wonder if gender differences in wealth are important. After all, don’t most men and women marry, rendering any gender wealth difference relatively unimportant? Actually, about half of all households are headed by single (never-married, widowed, or divorced) persons, which makes the wealth gap between men and women a reality for a large percentage of people. Also, prominent social circumstances prevent women from closing the wealth gap through marriage. First, the protection that is offered by marriage will disappear for large groups of women, since about half of all marriages end in divorce. Second, men and women are marrying at later ages, leaving women with more years in which they are self-supporting. In fact, women now spend more of their adult years single than married.

Mexico’s Struggle to “Vivir Mejor”

By Susan Pick

With all the ambitious international goals and targets that developing countries have committed to, from poverty reduction to universal education and access to health care, we’ve observed a not uncommon response by the governments: too strong a focus on the public image of the new programs, not strong enough a focus on making the programs truly accessible. Here’s an example to illustrate our point: On a daily basis, Mexicans are exposed to immeasurable social development propaganda from government agencies. The propaganda is unavoidable because these messages are disseminated via commercials on public transportation, highway billboards, TV and radio, and

Memo From Amsterdam: On Living in an Old City

By Sharon Zukin

This winter I left my inland loft in Greenwich Village for an apartment on a canal in Amsterdam. From my desk in the living room I look out over the cold gray water and also, with a slight swivel of gaze, over the Amstel River itself. On this river at the beginning of December I saw Sint Niklaas, dressed less like a jolly Santa Claus and more like a stern Catholic bishop, arrive with a flotilla of small boats for the holiday season. On New Year’s Eve, my fellow city dwellers set off amateur fireworks that lighted the sky over the river for several hours.

Beauty – Episode 9 – The Oxford Comment

In this, the 10th Oxford Comment, Lauren and Michelle investigate what makes a classic beauty icon, learn about appearance-based discrimination, talk body politics, and discover the threads that tie fashion to beauty.

Go ahead. Raise the retirement age. Who can afford to retire anyway?

By Mariko Lin Chang

Any day now the Senate will decide whether to raise the retirement age to 69. Proponents argue that raising the retirement age is necessary to save Social Security. Opponents argue that raising the retirement age will disproportionately hurt low-income and minority workers. But this is all irrelevant to many because recent actions by the Senate and current economic realities have already helped to ensure that most people won’t be able to fund their “golden years.”

Take women, for example. Given the Senate’s failure to pass the Equal Paycheck Act, it’s unlikely that the persistently stubborn wage gap will decline on its own, leaving women earning only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Assuming that the typical person works about 40 years

Are the UN’s Millennium Development Goals missing the point?

By Susan Pick and Jenna T. Sirkin

In September, our world leaders met in New York for the Summit on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. They congratulated one another for lower child mortality rates, the increase in women’s empowerment and a reduction in the number of new HIV/AIDS cases; they lamented how far we are from reaching the eight goals we established ten years ago. But are they missing the point?

One of the Millennium Development Goals is particularly complex: achievement of universal primary education. We measure the progress made toward this goal with net enrollment ratios, the proportion of pupils who finish primary school, and literacy rates. We know that according to the UN’s 2010 report, “enrollment in primary education

Surprise! “Men are Hornier than Women.”

By Roy F. Baumeister
The problem of recognizing the reality of the male sex drive was brought home to me in a rather amusing experience I had some years ago. I was writing a paper weighing the relative influence of cultural and social factors on sexual behavior, and the influence consistently turned out to be stronger on women than on men. In any scientific field, observing a significant difference raises the question of why it happens. We had to consider several possible explanations, and one was that the sex drive is milder in women than in men. Women might be more willing to adapt their sexuality to local norms and contexts and different situations, because they aren’t quite so driven by strong urges and cravings as men are.

I want to be an advocate for racial justice. Now what?

Mark R. Warren is Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University. He is a sociologist and has published widely on community organizing and on efforts to build alliances across race and class to revitalize urban communities, reform public education and expand democracy. Warren is the author of Fire in the Heart: How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice and you can read his previous OUPblog post on racism here.

In these videos, he discusses his book, race relations in schools, and activism.

Why Racial Profiling is like Affirmative Action

By Elvin Lim

The Transportation and Security Administration‘s new video screening and pat-down procedures has given new fuel to advocates of racial profiling at airports around the nation. Opponents of racial profiling argue that treating an individual differently simply because of his or her race is wrong because discrimination, even for noble intentions, is just plain wrong. Let’s call this the principle of formal equality.

Oddly enough, this is exactly what opponents of affirmative action say. They typically argue that some other signifier, for example class, can be a more efficient, and less discriminatory way of achieving similar outcomes if affirmative action policies were in place.

Paycheck Fairness Act Fails in Senate

By Mariko Lin Chang

Last week, the Senate Republicans defeated the Paycheck Fairness Act. The bill would have strengthened the Equal Pay Act by providing more effective protections and remedies to victims of sex discrimination in wages, including prohibiting employers from retaliating against employees who discuss their wages with another employee, requiring employers to prove that wage differences between women and men doing the same work are the result of education, training, experience, or other job-related factors, and providing victims of sex discrimination in wages the same legal remedies currently available to those experiencing pay discrimination on the basis of race or national origin.

Was the bill perfect? Probably not (few, if any bills could be considered perfect). But the Republican senators threw the baby out with the bath water.

Memo From Las Vegas: What’s the Matter with Casino Capitalism?

Tweet By Sharon Zukin Taking a position on Las Vegas is like taking an option on a company’s stock: if you like the place, you’re betting that free markets, human power over nature and boundless shopping opportunities will continue to rule the world.  If you don’t like it, you’re a killjoy…or a sociologist. I made […]

Racism and Antiracism

By Mark R. Warren

We seem to be facing a new wave of racial animosity in our country right now, from the Florida preacher who threatened to burn a Koran unless the Manhattan Islamic center was moved, to Arizona’s new immigration law legalizing racial profiling; from Glenn Beck high-jacking Dr. King’s march anniversary on the Mall in DC with an overwhelmingly white Tea Party crowd, to the New York gubernatorial candidate who won the Republican nomination after sending monkey pictures and tribal dance emails mocking President Obama.

In the face of this divisiveness, we have an urgent need to better understand how to bring Americans together across racial and religious lines.