US-Germany Collaborative Research: Perceptions of Fairness: Attitudes about Opportunity and Status Among Women Scientists in Germany and the US

Catholic University Of America, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

0233241 Hanson This award supports Sandra Hanson and a junior faculty member from Catholic University in a collaboration with Stefan Fuchs of the Department of Sociology at the University of Munich, Germany. The project will analyze differences in attitudes about opportunity, status, and inequality among women in science and technology occupations in the former East Germany, West Germany, and the US. It will also compare attitudes of female scientists with non-scientists and male scientists. Changes over time in women scientists' attitudes will also be considered. One hypothesis is that the experiences of women scientists in the former East Germany will result in a very different set of ideas about what it takes to get ahead, about their own socio-economic position and mobility, and about reasons for inequality than will be found among from West Germany and the US. Examination of mobility-related attitudes in an important area of social mobility research since those attitudes provide insight into the relation between the structure of political and socio-economic systems and the structure of mobility attitudes at the individual and country levels. The project also has an educational objective. The project will allow a junior faculty member to benefit from performing research in another country. She will develop a heightened appreciation of the world while also learning important new technical skills.