At last night’s Oscars, social issues were center stage. Below, four of the issues award winners touched on and some starting points for learning more:
  1. Equal Pay for Equal Work: The Council on Contemporary families offers aportfolio of research on 50 years since the Equal Pay Act, and we suggest checking out the pieces on how the wage gap narrows among high earners and how the wage gap is affected by race and ethnicity.
  2. Awareness of Diseases like ALS and Alzheimer’s: A 2012 American Sociological Review article by Rachel Kahn Best outlines how awareness campaigns bring more funding to medical research on some conditions, but add to the stigma associated with others.
  3. Voting Rights: The Scholars Strategy Network presents an overview of research on steps forward and back since the Voting Rights Act of 1963.
  4. Mass Incarceration: Sarah Shannon and Chris Uggen offer a starting point with their time-lapse visualizations of changes in American punishment, including the disproportionate incarceration of black men.