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This article examines Erik Jörgen Hansen's paper concerning Danish educational equalization. He starts by discussing a certain specified goal, social equality in the field of education. He then deals with a number of obstacles which according to him prevent the realization of the desired goal in existing school systems. Finally he proposes certain measures to clear away the obstacles or minimize their importance. The goals discussed by Hansen is social equality in the field of education. What this means to him he discusses at some length and comes out with a number of definitions. One of these, consistent equality, he then tries to operationalize. This means in its general version that equality is reached when the educational system is so constructed, that it for all leads to a result that does not make it possible to find any useful criterion according to which individuals can be singled out in relation to the education obtained. In a more limited way this goal can be said to have been reached if the individuals in various categories, examples are social groups, geographical area, sex and others, on the average, regardless of category, reach a completely identical educational result.

In this paper I discuss ways in which gender relations -- that is relations of inequality between women and men -- may change in aging societies where life expectations are high, fertility low, and where old people constitute a high proportion of the population. The central argument is that the aging society will provide opportunities to develop more egalitarian relations between women and men both in the public and private sphere. Such opportunities will only be realized if the link between gender and the care of children is severed. This is most likely to occur if women's position in the labor market is improved. It is argued that the aging society may indeed have a high demand for women's labor which makes such a development likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the debate about the Scandinavian welfare states from a feminist perspective, focusing on the differences between a feminist perspective and the dominant liberal and critical Marxist understanding of the welfare state, in particular it focuses on the argument that the Scandinavian welfare states are the most advanced in relation to women and discusses both the potentialities and dangers in the Scandinavian welfare states in relation to women. Feminists have pointed out that the concept of gender has been disregarded from a theoretical and methodological point of view in both liberal and Marxist analyses of the welfare state. The fundamental concepts have been either the individual or the class, and the determining forces of the development of the welfare state have been found in the political sphere or in the economy or in the interrelation between the two spheres. The paper points to the need to integrate gender relations in the theoretical model for an analysis of the welfare state and emphasizes the need to explore the relationship between the family and the state (and the family and the economy) in the different welfare states. The paper emphasizes that the qualitative differences in the organization of care work are important for understanding the institutional differences between the welfare states, and especially the Scandinavian welfare states, where motherhood and care work has today become a part of social citizenship. The author argues that even though women have in important ways become empowered in the Scandinavian welfare states as mothers, workers and citizens, they have at the same time become subsumed under a new kind of male domination in the public sphere. A further exploration of this new kind of male domination must transcend the theoretical framework of both Marxism and liberalism and must begin to rethink such central concepts as citizenship, power and interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments were designed and performed to test an explanatory conjecture stated in an earlier paper. The conjecture says that dissonance (or cognitive imbalance) will occur among overrewarded participants in groups if, and only if, the overrewarded person is receiving or expects to receive indications of disapproval concerning how rewards are distributed in the group from an authority figure or an equitably rewarded group member. The experiments reported here used a modified Berger situation. The results tend to disconfinn the conjecture as stated. Various explanations of the negative results are discussed. Some further theoretical arguments concerning the nature and consequences of inequity are presented. In spite of much experimental and other research, we do not possess much more trustworthy (replicable) information about equity processes than Homans did when he wrote Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms. Some reasons for the empirical impasse are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares recent developments in income inequality in Canada, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition to describing cross-national variation in changes in income inequality, the paper examines different explanatory factors for these recent developments. The findings reported indicate that there is substantial cross-national variation, not only with regard to the level of inequality, but furthermore with regard to changes in inequality. The results indicate that the equalizing effect of welfare state redistribution did not decrease in all countries. By contrast, in all countries there was a universal tendency towards increased inequality in the pre-tax and transfer distribution, although the magnitude of the change differs from country to country. Even though a polarization of the earnings distribution is reported, the results still give no support to cross-national convergence with regard to income inequality during the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contains in its first part an attempt at showing that certain important results of Alfred C. Kinsey's investigations can throw new light upon the problem of equality for woman and upon the relations of woman to war. The second part tries to demonstrate that the suppression of woman is not an expression of a striving for power in the man, but is his attempt at solving a difficult special sexual problem, the problem that he in the lasting sexual relation in the last half of life, is the sexually weaker. The third part points to the fact that woman is involved in the mechanism leading to war and that she therefore has responsibility in connection with war. It is explained why it is so important that woman learn to see the difference between the men's society and the secret male society.[SUP1] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper educational careers are conceptualized as a function of the educational structure and a set of individual characteristics that comprise an individual's educational potential. Social inequality of education is defined in terms of the relationship between social origin and educational potential. Using this definition, it is shown that despite a marked increase in the number of students attaining higher education in Denmark, no change occurred in the social inequality of education. The relationship between social origin and educational potential is inferred by applying a stochastic process model in which the educational potential is assumed to govern the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the theory of status value and the behavior of individuals regarding inequities in rewards distribution. The theory of distributive justice is concerned with the way in which socially valued rewards, such as salaries, promotions, or special privileges, get allocated to members of a social system. The two basic notions are that, individuals have what they regard as legitimate expectations about how rewards should be allocated, and if such expectations are violated there is both strain and pressures for social change. In considering injustice or inequity, the idea of relative deprivation has played a key role. That is, feelings of dissatisfaction and associated pressures for change depend not on the absolute level of reward received but on the relationship between rewards received and rewards expected. A theory of status value is a theory of the honorific significance of rewards and of attributes possessed by social actors and social objects. In the theory of status value, imbalanced status situations develop strains and pressures for change, while balanced status situations are stable. It is not supposed that empirically observed balanced situations never change, nor even that empirically observed imbalanced situations always change, because status balance is never the only factor in empirically observed social situations.

Lately, in Norway, as in many other countries, there has been considerable focus on social inequalities among women. It seems that the level of education is of great significance for women's practices and ideals in many areas. Norwegian time-use studies from 1970, 1980 and 1990 were used to investigate whether level of education affects mothers' priorities regarding housework and childcare and how this changed during the 1970s and 1980s. Also discussed is how differences in terms of housework and childcare time should be assessed and evaluated. During the years in question, there was a clear tendency towards highly educated mothers spending less time on housework than mothers with a lower level of education, but the differences diminished somewhat during the period. In 1970, 1980 and 1990 there was a tendency for well-educated mothers to spend more time on active childcare than mothers with less education. Dissimilarities in this area were rather stable. Concerning total time spent with children, there were minor differences among mothers in relation to level of education in all three years investigated. Hence, it seems that well-educated mothers model their childcare somewhat differently from less-educated mothers in that they spend a larger proportion of their time with their children on active care. There are, then, similarities as well as dissimilarities between mothers in various educational groups regarding the way they shape their parental role, and in the 1970s and 1980s we saw an equalizing trend as well as stable inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a defence of the methods and findings of what some critics have referred to as the 'Nuffield school of class analysis'. In particular, we respond to the critique mounted by Hellevik and Ringen, whose most recent publication appeared in an earlier volume of this journal. We argue that these authors adopt an arbitrary and essentialist view of what constitutes inequality, and have either misunderstood or misrepresented the aims and methodology of the research programme they deride. Ringen, moreover, explicitly concedes all of its major substantive results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While women earn less, on average, than men in all advanced industrialized countries, countries vary in the size of the gender earnings gap. We use data from nine advanced industrialized democracies to investigate the extent to which the ratio of women's to men's income is associated with sex segregation, labor's power and inclusiveness, leftist parties' strength, family policies, labor demand, and relative human capital levels. In general, labor's ability to bargain collectively explains more of the gender gap, directly and indirectly, than other factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article critically discusses the two main uses of the concept of class in recent stratification research. They are John Goldthorpe's analysis of social mobility from a class formation perspective and Erik O. Wright's analysis of income inequality in the labor market. I argue that the main problem with both efforts is the lack of a satisfactory theory of how class generates inequality within the labor market. The logic of Goldthorpe's argument assumes that class causes inequality generating separate class interests in the labor market, but he does not provide such a theory. Wright provides such a theory. However, his several class schemes either provide explanations for inequality that can be derived from standard internal labor market theory that does not satisfy the requirement of class theory; or, they are based on a concept of exploitation that is unsatisfactory for the identification of class categories within the labor market. I observe that it is not clear why Marxist theory needs a class theory of how inequality is generated within the labor market: standard neo-classical economic theory seems consistent with Marx's own conception of the capitalist economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on AIDS and the oppression of homosexual people. Until the 1960s there was a blanket of silence over homosexuality. Coming to the 1970s, homosexual people had acquired a certain optimism about their acceptance in society. Homosexual people were not only deviant in their sexual habits, but a threat to the whole humankind. Homosexual behavior is as old as human history, so is its control. Only the rationale and the source of control appear to change according to the perception of gains it offers to various interest groups at any particular moment of time. During 1983, AIDS caused an unprecedented wave of panic and a sharp increase in discrimination and violence against gay men in some Western countries, most notably in the U.S. and also in Finland. The panic took such dangerous forms in the U.S. that a congressional committee was set up to study the causes of the situation. AIDS is a very serious medical problem. However, it is more than merely a medical problem, it is first and foremost a social and psychological one which has serious consequences both at the level of individual suffering and at the wider societal level of human rights, equality as well as the quality and value of human life, all of which are under threat.

This article deals with the generation and reproduction of informal organization on board Norwegian oil installations in the North Sea. The process through which change comes about is considered. After a general discussion of informal organization, the article focuses on the formal organizational set-up and the managerial strategies for control, which provide the frame-work or background for the informal organization offshore. Examples from offshore life are utilized to analyse offshore working conditions and to demonstrate the importance of informal organization in the world of North Sea oil. The hierarchical structure of platform organizations is critically reviewed in the concluding section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses aspects of mortality, inequality and social theory. If health and longevity depend essentially on nutrition and the material level of living, at least before circa 1900, then mortality rates furnish an acceptable measure of living conditions. Change level of living, particularly nutrition, and the death rate will change too. There is a great difference between population response and individual response, and research techniques geared to the latter may fail to predict or explain the former, population response. Mortality offers an excellent illustration. In epidemiology as well as in much sociological work a strategy is followed which rests on variation among numerous units at a given time. These units, typically individuals, are classified by some index of environment. Thus mortality can be studied in different social classes. To measure inequality, one should take mortality, a measure of the probability of death, in some privileged stratum as the numerator and the overall risk for the entire population as the denominator, thus forming a relative risk or risk ratio. A first objection to the method is that one might equally have computed the difference as the ratio, subtracting population risk from the risk within the most-exposed stratum instead of dividing the latter by the former. In terms of risk ratios for death, inequality would appear to be increasing, in terms of survival ratio to be increasing.

The popular belief in Iceland and elsewhere is that Icelandic society is typified by a high degree of social equality. This view is shown to be incorrect by using longitudinal data relating to access to elite professions as well as recent survey material. Explanations for the peristence of the myth are sought in the kinship network, social mobility, language, status ambiguity, affluence, and the changing occupational structure of contemporary Iceland. It is suggested that stratification will become more obvious to Icelanders with a further decline of traditional society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article attempts in Polish sociology to explain social structure and social stratification in socialist society are analyzed. The author claims that an adequate stratification principle or social determinant to explain the distribution of social attributes in socialist society is lacking. The theoretical significance of the concept "socialist intelligentsia" is analyzed and claimed to disguise an eventual social élite. The socialist intelligentsia and the Communist Party are, in theoretical contexts, treated as "black box" entities without regard to internal differentiation, an approach which covers basic social inequalities in socialist society. Problems of social conflict are usually reduced to the technical problem of setting fair wage limits. The thesis of social decomposition or status incongruency is contested and questioned as an indicator of social equality. The author argues that control over the economy might serve as an adequate social determinant in socialist society from which it is possible to derive secondary social attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central theme of this article is: What changes in the educational system might diminish the existing social disparities of opportunity in obtaining an education. The point of departure for the discussion is the fact that there exists a continuing stable distribution of education among and between various social classes. The author suggests that the educational policy instrumented thus far has been inefficient in achieving a redistribution of education among the various social classes. This development has been largely due to the educational policys general insignificance in effecting the chances of success for those seeking an education. In face of this situation he proposes two determining conditions for the diminishment of social inequality in aquiring an education: in part, thorough changes in the educational structure, as shock effects; and in part, through altered student-teacher interaction. In light of the objective of equality the author then evaluates some of the main tendencies in Danish educational policy in recent years and proposes some elements for a new, more equality-oriented educational policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A methodological critique is presented of experiments on reactions to inequity (failure of distributive justice) reported by J. Stacy Adams and coworkers. It is alleged that social pressures from the experimenter rather than perceived inequity may account for the experimental findings. A new experiment is reported in which attempts were made to remove any pressures from the experimenter. A theoretical reformulation is presented which, if correct, seems to account for the findings of a number of equity experiments reported in the literature. It is indicated how the proposed explanation is experimentally verifiable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]