Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World

by Ronald Inglehart, Pippa Norris

The twentieth century gave rise to profound changes in traditional sex roles. This study reveals how modernization has changed cultural attitudes towards gender equality and analyzes the political consequences. It systematically compares attitudes towards gender equality worldwide, comparing almost 70 nations, ranging from rich to poor, agrarian to postindustrial. This volume is essential reading to gain a better understanding of issues in comparative politics, public opinion, political behavior, development and sociology.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Ronald F. Inglehart (born September 5, 1934) was a political scientist at the University of Michigan. He was director of the World Values Survey, a global network of social scientists who have carried out representative national surveys of the publics of over 80 societies on all six inhabited continents, containing 90 percent of the world's population. The first wave of surveys for this project was carried out in 1981 and the latest wave was completed in 2014. Since 2010 Inglehart was co-director of the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research at the National Research University - Higher School of Economics in Moscow and St Petersburg. This laboratory has carried out surveys in Russia and eight ex-Soviet countries and is training Phd.-level students in quantitative cross-national research methods.

In the seventies Inglehart began developing an influential theory of Generational Replacement causing intergenerational value change from materialist to postmaterialist values that helped shape the Eurobarometer Surveys, the World Values Surveys and other cross-national survey projects. Building on this work, he subsequently developed a revised version of Modernization theory, Evolutionary Modernization Theory, which argues that economic development, welfare state institutions and the long peace between major powers since 1945, are reshaping human motivations in ways that have important implications concerning gender roles, sexual norms, the role of religion, economic behavior and the spread of democracy.

Reviews

[Robert Narojek · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authors of the Rising Tide, are trying to explain how modernization changed the cultural attitude to gender equality. Moving from poor to rich countries, from agrarian to post-industrial countries, they compare gender relations around the world. The rising tide is a recommended reading for those who want to understand comparative politics, sociology of politics, public opinion science, political behavior and political development. However it is very "dry" and full of academic language :)

[Dylan Groves · Rating 3 out of 5]

big if true

[Mocha · Rating 1 out of 5]

My professor assigned this as required reading, and while it was interesting, I can't help but feel that maybe we should have read something more up to date.

[Read a Book · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched and stats heavy, I still felt that something was missing in the book's causal link between shifting gender equality/roles and cultural change. Inglehart is a brilliant mind, so this is worth reading for students of Political Science.

[hh · Rating 1 out of 5]

for my gender, leadership, and management class. if i were a stats junkie, i might feel differently about this. or if i believed that secular capitalism could solve all the world's ills. blech.