{"id":1717,"date":"2018-08-21T08:27:12","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T13:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/?p=1717"},"modified":"2018-08-21T20:20:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T01:20:08","slug":"a-moving-target-tracking-changes-in-support-for-equal-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2018\/08\/21\/a-moving-target-tracking-changes-in-support-for-equal-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"A Moving Target: Tracking Changes in Support for Equal Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For several years, researchers affiliated with the Council on Contemporary families have been charting the gains and the setbacks experienced by proponents of equal rights for all, irrespective of\u00a0race, ethnicity<\/a>,\u00a0gender<\/a>, and\u00a0sexual orientation\u00a0<\/a>or identity.<\/p>\n

From a historical perspective, dramatic progress has been made toward acceptance of interpersonal diversity. Most people now agree in principle that individuals should not be denied rights or recognition on the basis of their gender, race, or sexual identity. But in practice there are also significant fluctuations in attitudes and behaviors. Many people hold contradictory or ambivalent positions about what is appropriate in putting egalitarian principles into practice, which makes them prone to shift their views in response to new political and economic circumstances or how issues are presented to them by contending parties. Furthermore, some arguments for egalitarian reforms that are very powerful when clear-cut legal barriers to equality exist can produce divergent reactions when such barriers are overturned.<\/p>\n

Recent polls on same-sex marriage and LGBT rights illustrate this point. The shift from condemnation to acceptance of same-sex marriage has been extraordinarily rapid. In 2004,\u00a0only 30 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage.\u00a0By 2015, when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, support had risen to 55 percent. And in July the Public Religion Research Institute found that\u00a0an\u00a0all-time high<\/a>\u00a0of 64 percent of Americans supported marriage equality.<\/p>\n

But that last poll also revealed a recent decrease in public support for combatting discrimination against same-sex couples in the marketplace. A year ago, 53 percent of Americans said that caterers, bakers, and other wedding-based businesses should be required to serve same-sex couples, whatever their personal religious views. Today just 48 percent endorse that view, even as acceptance of a right to marriage equality has risen.\u00a0\u00a0One possibility is that the very arguments used to win support for same-sex marriage now cut two ways. The idea that individuals have a right to control their own bodies and choose their own mates helped garner majority support for contraception and\u00a0abortion right<\/a>s\u00a0and for same-sex marriage. But it can also produce sympathy for people who believe they should not have to enable behaviors of which they disapprove.\u00a0\u00a0To win people over on this issue, we need to make a nuanced argument that does not immediately reject as reactionary their respect for others’ individual consciences. For example, if I were a baker, I would refuse to make a cake to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Ku Klux Klan. How do we explain the difference to the general public?<\/p>\n

Or consider the\u00a0ambiguities and contradictions we find in\u00a0surveys about the\u00a0public\u2019s support for gender equality. In 2012, David Cotter, Joan Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman\u00a0reviewed<\/a>\u00a0all the General Social Survey (GSS) questions about gender attitudes between 1977 and 2010. They found that after strong increases in egalitarian sentiments through the 1980s, support had plateaued and stalled in the 1990s and early 2000s. One explanation,\u00a0they suggested<\/a>, might be the emergence of a mindset that supports women\u2019s right to equality in the public sphere but views any continuation of traditional gender arrangements after the establishment of anti-discrimination laws as reflecting women\u2019s distinctive preferences and capacities for homemaking and child raising.<\/p>\n

By the time the results of the 2014 GSS were published, the same researchers were able to report a\u00a0significant rebound<\/a>\u00a0in support for gender equality since 2006.\u00a0But when Cotter and Joanna Pepin looked at the 2014 results of a different survey, which had been tracking the attitudes of high-school seniors over almost exactly the same years as the GSS, they saw\u00a0a different trend.<\/a>\u00a0Between 1976 and 1994, high-school seniors greatly increased their support for gender equality in both the public and the private realm. From 1994 to 2014, they maintained their egalitarian views about women in public life, including an expanded acceptance and approval of working mothers. But during that same period, their endorsement of dual-earner arrangements and equal decision-making in the home dropped significantly, suggesting a\u00a0revival of\u00a0traditionalism.<\/p>\n

The 2016 GSS — the latest available — seemed to confirm that support for\u00a0the gender revolution was firmly \u201cback on track\u201d \u2013 at least for people aged 18 and up. Indeed, Cotter found that the answers to every question, whether about private family relationships or about the public realm of work and politics, revealed greater endorsement<\/a>\u00a0of gender equality than at any time in the survey\u2019s 39 year history.<\/p>\n

Sociologists Barbara Risman, Ray Sin,\u00a0and William Scarborough, in a\u00a0separate analysis<\/a>\u00a0of the GSS, argue that the long-term story is actually quite straightforward. Old school traditionalists have basically abandoned their opposition to equal rights for women in the public sphere but continue to advocate gender-specialized roles at home: \u201cAmericans who have a carte-blanche objection to gender equality in both the workplace and the home have become almost extinct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, we have yet to see what trends will emerge when the 2016 survey of high school seniors is analyzed \u2013 or how the views of the high school seniors interviewed in recent years will evolve as they grapple with their own work and family realities.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there are other confusing discrepancies. In the 2016 GSS, Cotter reports, the gender gap in attitudes about equality had narrowed to its smallest point ever,\u00a0with most of the change \u201cattributable to men\u2019s catching up with women\u2019s egalitarian attitudes.\u201d\u00a0Yet according to an\u00a0August 3, 2018<\/a>\u00a0report by the respected polling group FiveThirtyEight, the gender gap among voters\u00a0is now larger than it has been in decades \u2013 perhaps ever. The gap between women\u2019s preferences for Democrats and men\u2019s preferences for Republicans ranges from 26 to 36 points in several states.<\/p>\n

In a future piece I\u2019ll look at research that might explain some of these shifting and occasionally contradictory findings. But my point here is that there is a substantial middle group between people who unequivocally support equal rights under all circumstances and people who unequivocally oppose them. The traditional opposition to gender equality as a matter of patriarchal principle seems to have been largely overturned. However, many people experience specific challenges in their work or family lives that\u00a0can\u00a0undermine<\/a>\u00a0their egalitarian impulses. Others hold conflicted feelings and competing ideals. It\u2019s important to remember that a large section of the population is \u201cup for grabs,\u201d so to speak. Few are such committed feminists or anti-feminists that they can\u2019t be swayed by personal experience or powerful arguments. We can’t count on those who say they support gender equality to\u00a0always practice\u00a0equality, and we should not assume that everyone who is skeptical about\u00a0egalitarianism is a dyed-in-the-wool sexist.\u00a0It\u2019s up to us to provide experiences and arguments that help people work through their ambivalence and see the benefits of social equality for men as well as for women — and for society at large.<\/p>\n

Stephanie Coontz is the CCF Director of Research and Education and a Professor of History at The Evergreen State College.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For several years, researchers affiliated with the Council on Contemporary families have been charting the gains and the setbacks experienced by proponents of equal rights for all, irrespective of\u00a0race, ethnicity,\u00a0gender, and\u00a0sexual orientation\u00a0or identity. From a historical perspective, dramatic progress has been made toward acceptance of interpersonal diversity. Most people now agree in principle that individuals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2095,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[738,96943,746,470,96944,39348,33641,97004,363,123,8959,55,3849,1434,14,3432,1936,54],"class_list":["post-1717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-abortion","tag-anti-gay-discrimination","tag-attitudes","tag-discrimination","tag-discrimination-policies","tag-egalitarian","tag-egalitarianism","tag-equal-rights","tag-equality","tag-ethnicity","tag-families","tag-gender","tag-gender-equality","tag-lgbt","tag-race","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-sexual-identity","tag-sexual-orientation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2095"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1723,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions\/1723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}