Jennings (2006) Gender Gaps in Attitudes and Beliefs

This study looks at attitudes about women's societal role within generations as they age and across generations.

Two variants of the gap:
(1) Longitudinal: The difference in support between men and women across generations at different points in time (focuses on change overtime across generations).
(2) Contemporaneous: The difference in support between men and women at a given time (looks at changes within generations over time).

The three samples:
(1) pre-movement
(2) during the movement
(3) post-movement

This study adds much to other studies that look at the gender gap, but do not consider longitudinal samples or multiple generations:
(1) replicated and multiple indicators or relevant attitudes within the same surveys
(2) developments across the life span
(3) multiple generations coming of age in discrete historical eras
(4) observations of pre-adults

Indicators of attitudes of attitudes about the political role of women:
(1) opinions about women;s place in the home v the public sphere
(2) support for the women;s movement
(3) beliefs about the current influence of women and men in public life

Three possible perspectives on the direction and magnitude of gender gaps across time and over generations:
(1) generation effects
-which can result from compositional differences across gens.
-or from birth cohorts which experience different political histories (which would be the generational-units that mannheim talks about).
(2) period effects
-reflect the impact of events and movements in the external world.
-fall more or less equully on all politically aware segments of the population; but period effects fall more heavily on the young, who are more impressionable than the resistant old. "In terms of the present analysis, period effects would be implicated if we fin that individuals from separate generations are moving in the same direction with respect to a belief in gender equality" (195). Do period effects fall equally on men and women?
(3) life-cycle effects
-as one ages certain beliefs become more tamped down or exacerbated, across genernations; i.e. people get more conservative as they age, CW. (see Sears 1990 for a study looking at whether attitudes become more resistant to change as individuals age).

METHODS
bla bla

FINDINGS:
-support for equal role of women in society:
*the increase is support is higher among women than men
*gen 1 women (43-59)= 17%; gen 3 women (23ish) = 74% (57% increase)
*1997 survey of men who grew up during the movement and their sons (post-movement) = fathers 8% more supportive. "Thus in contrast to women, with a more or less stead incrase or sustain suport across generations and time, support among men receded in the post-movement generation.." (200).