ORIGINAL ARTICLE The Cultural Divide and Changing Beliefs about Gender in the United States, 1974–2010 Kristen Schultz Lee 1 & Paula A. Tufiş 2 & Duane F. Alwin 3 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2017 Abstract The present paper examines claims of a growing cultural divide in the United States. We analyze social change in beliefs about gender over a period of 36 years (from 1974 to 2010) in the United States using data from the nationally representative General Social Survey (GSS). We find evidence of growing gender egalitarianism until the mid-1990s, with a reversal between 1996 and 2000, and a decline in state differences in beliefs about gender over time in our decomposition analysis and multilevel models. Although we find significant differences in gender beliefs among states in the 1970s based on their voting record on the Equal Rights Amendment and based on patterns of family formation and family life associated with the Second Demographic Transition, these differences among states decreased or disappeared entirely by the early years of the twenty-first century. We highlight the implications of our findings for the ongoing public and academic debate surrounding growing cultural differences among states. Keywords Genderequality . Sex role attitudes . Gender . Genderattitudes . Social change . Cohort analysis . Second demographic transition A growing body of research in sociology and political science has focused on changes in the polarization in mass publics with respect to a range of social and policy-related attitudes and be- liefs. James Davison Hunter’ s(1991, p. 42) book Culture Wars and his introduction of the idea of polarization, in which he used the Bcultural warfare^ metaphor to describe the existence in the U.S. of Bpolitical and social hostility rooted in different systems of moral understanding, ^ set the stage for a substantial amount of research. Recent studies have suggested that culture may be supplanting social class as the major line of demarcation in accounting for party choice and political identities in American politics (see Alwin and Tufis 2016; Frank 2004; Layman 2001). Despite Hunter’ s(1991) argument, the emerging literature on polarization characterizes these apparent ideological conflicts as Bmyths^ (Baldassarri and Bearman 2007; Baldassarri and Gelman 2008; Davis and Robinson 1996; Dimaggio et al. 1996; Evans 2003; Fiorina et al. 2005; Thomson 2010). Defining polarization using statistical terminology (in terms of dispersion, bimodality, constraint, and consolidation), one highly-cited study (DiMaggio et al. 1996, p. 715; see also Evans 2003) concluded that, rather than supporting the Bwidely held belief that Americans have become sharply polarized, ^ they have become more united on most issues (e.g., in their views on women’ s role in the public sphere) and racial attitudes and for the most part divided on only a few issues (e.g., attitudes toward abortion). Similar arguments have been made by others, using different measures and different types of data (e.g., Davis and Robinson 1996; Fiorina et al. 2005; Thomson 2010). Thus, despite its potential appeal as a way of understanding some of the dynamics of the cultural dialogue in American society over the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the hypothesis of Some of the data used in this analysis are derived from Sensitive Data Files of the GSS, obtained under special contractual arrangements designed to protect the anonymity of respondents. These data are not available from the authors. Persons interested in obtaining GSS Sensitive Data Files should contact the GSS at GSS@NORC.org. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0874-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Kristen Schultz Lee Kslee4@buffalo.edu 1 Department of Sociology, University at Buffalo, SUNY, 430 Park Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA 2 Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania 3 Department of Sociology and Population Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA Sex Roles https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0874-4