Key Words gender role attitudes, beliefs about gender inequality, race, ethnicity s Abstract Research on how gender-related attitudes vary across racial/ethnic groups has produced contradictory results, depending upon the type of attitudes addressed. In this chapter, I review the literature on racial and ethnic variations in three broadly defined types of gender attitudes: attitudes toward gender roles; beliefs about the origins and extent of gender inequality; and preferences for social action to reduce gender inequalities. I address three racial/ethnic groups in the United States: African Americans, whites, and Hispanic Americans. While research on attitudes toward gender roles has yielded mixed results, research addressing attitudes within the other two domains clearly indicates greater criticism of gender inequality among African Americans relative to whites; research on the various groups often combined under the label Hispanic is too limited to draw any clear conclusions. Along with addressing variations across these three types of gender-related attitudes, I also summarize several other patterns evident in the literature: convergence across groups over time; gender gaps in gender-related attitudes; and differential predictors of gender attitudes across racial/ethnic groups.

Drawing on qualitative interviews with parents of preschool children, the author addresses parental responses to children’s gender nonconformity. The author’s analyses indicate that parents welcome what they perceive as gender nonconformity among their young daughters, while their responses in relation to sons are more complex. Many parents across racial and class backgrounds accept or encourage some tendencies they consider atypical for boys. But this acceptance is balanced by efforts to approximate hegemonic ideals of masculinity. The author considers these patterns in the context of gender as an interactional accomplishment, demonstrating that parents are often consciously aware of their own role in accomplishing gender with and for their sons. Heterosexual fathers are especially likely to be motivated in that accomplishment work by their own personal endorsement of hegemonic masculinity, while heterosexual mothers and gay parents are more likely to be motivated by accountability to others in relation to those ideals.

This research addresses the effects of interviewer gender on responses to a broad array of gender-related survey questions, using data from a probability sample of adults in the United States. We focus on whether gender-of-interviewer effects are evident, whether they vary by respondent gender, and whether they vary across several attitudinal domains relevant to gender inequality. While many items do not show statistically significant gender-of-interviewer effects, we document significant effects across a variety of items. When such effects are evident, they tend to involve both male and female respondents expressing more egalitarian gender-related attitudes or greater criticism of existing gender inequalities to female interviewers. Male respondents offer significantly different responses to male and female interviewers on questions dealing with gender inequality in employment. For female respondents, interviewer-gender effects are evident for items addressing gender-related collective action, policy, and group interests. Using multivariate models that allow us to represent both respondent-level and interviewer-level variables, we find that interviewer-gender effects are statistically significant in most attitudinal domains but that the interaction between interviewer gender and respondent gender does not tend to be statistically significant. We consider the implications of these findings both for understanding the survey process and for understanding gender relations more generally. EMILY w. KANE is assistant professor of sociology at the University of WisconsinMadison, LAURA J. MACAULAY is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Much work on the perceived fairness of the division of housework focuses on what we consider pragmatic approaches (i.e., resources, time availability, and power), but nascent research articulates a more symbolic approach, examining relational meanings of house-work. We examine both perspectives simultaneously. Using the National Survey of Families and Households, we investigate how perceptions of housework fairness for men and women in heterosexual couples are affected by gender, time availability and the division of labor, individual resources and interdependence within the couple, gender and family attitudes, perceptions of the qualities of household labor, and partners' social interactions. Three critical findings suggest revisions for fairness perception studies. First, perceived housework qualities are as important for predicting fairness perceptions as any other factors. Second, perceived housework qualities are a stronger determinant of women's fairness perceptions than men's fairness perceptions. Third, social emotional independence within the couple also predicts perceived unfairness, but only for women. Women who perceive themselves as less dependent on their relationship are more likely to view the division of labor as unfair.

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