Two months ago, we discussed Judge and Livingston's finding that feminism carried an earnings penalty for men (9/23/08). Judge and Livingston also noted regional differences: people in the South were more likely to be traditionalist, while people in the Northeast were more likely to be egalitarian. Given that people in the Northeast seem to earn more than people in the South, based on a U.S. per capita income map, their finding that more traditional men earn more seems counterintuitive. However, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (2008) shows that income growth is highest in the South. Racial differences also seem to confound the issue. African americans held more egalitarian gender role orientations than caucasians.
I am so from the Northeast that it hurts. My parents met when attending MIT and Boston University. If you map everywhere I've lived for more than a month, (which I did), there's only 2 months in Virginia outside of New England. So, when I read that something has regional differences, I wonder how well I can really understand it. I was raised by a feminist household in a feminist part of the country -- how can I claim to understand how things are anywhere else?
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Having grown up considerably farther south than I currently live, I can attest to the difference in attitudes about gender. What I can't tell you (because I don't know) is why.
At least in the areas I've had the most experience with in the South, acceptance (and enforcement) "traditional" gender roles showed a strong correlation to the ruralness of the area -- the larger the town or city, the less likely a woman was to have her jaw broken for backtalk. The less violent and visible misogyny decreased as well, but at a less steep rate.
I'd be interested to know if this is also true in rural areas of New England. In, say, rural Vermont, are women more expected to stay barefoot and pregnant, or is this limited to the South specifically?
the odd thing about the part of rural new hampshire that I lived in was that we were sort of an artist-enclave kind of community. There was definitely a class divide - there were old hippies and stuff who had very liberal views, and some people who fit the "townie" stereotype pretty closely.
I would say there was pretty harsh identity policing within some of the community. But I feel like I was pretty well insulated from it.
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