inequality

Previous research shows that women experience a “motherhood penalty” at work when they have children, while having children actually helps men’s careers. New research shows that the motherhood penalty may actually be worse for women who make more money. This is because, in terms of dollars and some career paths, taking time off or switching to part-time work is more costly for high-earning women in the long run.

In workplaces that offer little flexibility, women are left with few options. In a recent Bloomberg article by Rachel Greenfield, sociologist Paula England elaborates:

“A lot of women are getting pushed into dropping out entirely for a few years because they can’t get a little leave at the beginning or because they can’t get enough flexibility.”

This results in a higher income loss than women in lower income positions experience. However, Greenfield notes that it is important to keep in mind that low-income women may actually be hit harder because they start out with fewer resources; high earning women simply suffer a disproportionate income loss.

Japan is known for its stressful corporate culture where overwork is very common. At the same time, Japan’s population is on the wane as the birth rate continues to drop. A recent article in Seeker highlights new research by University of Illinois sociology professor Eunmi Mun that may be able to tackle both of these problems at once with an innovative, if straightforward, idea: expanding paternity leave.

As Mun explains, Japanese norms regarding commitment to your job, the division of labor, and gender roles — norms quite similar to those in the United States — are driving factors in the dynamics described above. Mun explains,

“Taking leave is definitely a violation of that work culture and ideology. Another aspect is the very strong gender ideology in Japan. There’s a very clear gender division of labor, so men do not really have a function in the household. Their function is basically the breadwinning function.”

Therefore, Japanese women are more likely to take parental leave when they have a child, and this absence can have negative impacts on their career. If paternity leave is expanded, however, perhaps more families can have children and parental leave can become less of a gendered practice. For Japan and other nations, paternity leave may hold the key to an egalitarian family life.

With the cost of tuition rising at many public universities and a scarcity of aid from federal and state agencies alike, it is difficult to obtain a college education without incurring a mountain of debt in the United States. Wisconsin Public Radio talked with sociologist Sara Goldrick-Rab about her research on student debt and the ways it hinders students from completing their degrees.

Despite receiving Pell grants or other forms of federal aid, half of the 3,000 students in Goldrick-Rab’s study had dropped out within six years, and only twenty percent had completed their degrees in five years. She argues that attrition occurs because these forms of aid do not cover the large majority of costs for either two-year and four-year institutions. Specifically, state sources of funding do not hold up their end of the deal, which leads to tuition hikes at many state schools. As a result, many students are forced to decide between basic necessities and continuing their education. As Goldrick-Rab notes:

“The cost of living in this country is substantial and some college students are going without their basic needs met. It is very clear that hunger and homelessness are not strangers to undergraduates now, and that’s pretty devastating.”

Goldrick-Rab suggests that a possible solution is to make two-year associate’s degrees free. That way “you know what you’re getting from it, before you get involved in the risk involved of using debt to finance it.” Higher education is foundational to the future of the United States, so we must start investing more in students instead of making them choose between their next meal and earning a college degree.

As the election edges ever closer, the question of how support for such a polarizing figure like Donald Trump even became possible is on many people’s minds.

An article in The New Yorker examines sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild’s new book “Strangers in their Own Land,” for answers to this Trump phenomenon. Hochschild set out to understand the emotional root of the Tea Party movement and the Trump euphoria. Hochschild spent five years conducting research in rural parts of Southern Louisiana, where the vast majority of the population are poor, uneducated, and white.  She found that Tea Party supporters often described American society with a single narrative of “cheaters” and individuals who “do not want to work.” The New Yorker describes this narrative, below:

“The line-cutters were African-Americans, promoted by affirmative action, she writes, but also ‘women, immigrants, refugees, public-sector workers—where will it end? Your money is running through a liberal sympathy sieve you don’t control or agree with.'”

Hochschild writes that Trump fuels this perspective, shaming “virtually every line-cutting group” as people who are just eating away at government handouts, but then failing to mention that blue-collar white men benefit from food stamps and Medicaid. 

“‘In this feint’—by making it seem that white people who accept welfare are only taking advantage of what everyone else gets—’Trump solves a white male problem of pride.'”

While the gender gap in time spent on household chores is slowly declining, ideas about women as the primary caretaker of the home and caregiver for the children is still very present. These ideas in turn influence how men and women feel about parenting. A recent Huffington Post article features a new study that found mothers report more stress and fatigue than fathers. The researchers attribute this to the division of parenting tasks — married mothers are more likely to mange basic childcare tasks and are more likely to be alone with children, while married fathers are more often in charge of children’s play and leisure activities. Moreover, even when moms have leisure time, they are more likely to be interrupted or to report multitasking during this time.

According to sociologist Ann Meier,

“Having data systematically collected from thousands of parents allows us to confirm what parents have known for years — that parenting is meaningful but also stressful and tiring. Many mothers will recognize their experiences of interrupted sleep and daily feeding and bathing. Hopefully, many dads will see that their partners will likely be happier if they trade some of their leisure time with kids for more of the ‘work’ of parenting.”

The relationship between communities and police officers is getting an increasing amount of attention, particularly the effect police violence has on communities. The Atlantic recently reported on a new study by sociologists Matthew Desmond, Andrew Papachristos, and David Kirk that explores how trust in the police often decreases after a community experiences police violence. After analyzing 911 calls made in Milwaukee from 2004 to 2010, the researchers found that instances of police violence had an impact on the number of 911 calls being placed.

The study began after the highly publicized beating of Frank Jude by police officers in Milwaukee in 2004, after which the authors found that 22,000 fewer calls were placed to 911. They discovered a similar pattern following the killing of Sean Bell in Queens, New York in 2006, and the assault of Danyall Simpson in Milwaukee in 2007. The researchers concluded that instances of police violence, both locally and nationally, have lasting effects on African American communities as whole. David Kirk says,

“Once the story of Frank Jude’s beating appeared in the press, Milwaukee residents, especially people in black neighborhoods, were less likely to call the police, including to report violent crime. This means that publicized cases of police violence can have a community-wide impact on crime reporting that transcends individual encounters.”

Papachristos added in a statement,

“Police departments and city politicians often frame a publicized case of police violence as an ‘isolated incident’ … No act of police violence is an isolated incident, in both cause and consequence. Seemingly isolated incidents of police violence are layered upon a history of unequal policing in cities.”

America has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and it is important to consider the long-lasting impacts that the criminal justice system can have on a person. This goes beyond the struggles of life inside or finding a job once they’re free — they can also lose their right to vote. In fact, due to laws which strip voting rights from people with convictions, over six million Americans will not be able to vote this November. This aggregate estimate comes from a new report by our very own Chris Uggen, TSP Editor and University of Minnesota Regents Professor, and his research team (which you can read about at Quartz, New York Times, Yahoo News, Democracy Now!, The Denver Post, Vogue, and others). Uggen explains,

“The message that comes across to them is: Yes, you have all the responsibilities of a citizen now, but you’re basically still a second-class citizen because we are not permitting you to be engaged in the political process.”

Public opinion is mixed on this issue, but people are generally okay if released prisoners within general society are allowed to vote, meaning legislation may be behind the times. In fact, consider that the 2000 election between Bush and Gore ended with a neck-and-neck finish in Florida decided by less than six-hundred votes. Today, Florida has one of the highest rates of felon disenfranchisement, and in 2000, such voters could have decided the race.   Due to laws which strip voting rights from people with convictions, over six million Americans will not be able to vote this November. 

And speaking of “race,” laws which restrict felons from voting are in many ways a black-and-white issue. Because of such legislation, one in thirteen American black adults are not able to vote. As Uggen explains, felon disenfranchisement particularly hurts the African-American vote, a logical conclusion since the criminal justice system is already known to be racially disproportionate. These laws are often defended staunchly, but things may change in the future, and in large part thanks to work like this. 

When it comes to looking at patterns of police force, a recent study by sociologist Joscha Legewie notes a relationship brewed from conflict. As described in an article featured in Science Daily, Legewie finds that a pair of fatal shootings of police officers by black suspects in New York lead to an increase in the use of force in subsequent days by police against blacks, but not against whites and Hispanics. Legewie says that this finding,

“…Extends beyond acts of extreme violence against police officers. It suggests a general set of processes where local events create inter-group conflict, foreground stereotypes, and trigger discriminatory responses.”

Legewie stresses,

“Discriminatory behavior arises not only from static conditions but also from temporal sequences of events and responses. This process is applicable to all kinds of everyday interactions, both with the police and with others who might engage in discriminatory behavior, such as landlords or teachers.”

Professors of sociology often struggle to introduce sociological concepts in new and thought-provoking ways to their students. According to a recent article in Bowling Green Daily News, Professor Bertena Varney is tackling this issue in an unconventional way and using the Harry Potter series to engage her students with various sociological topics. In her “Inequality in Society” class at Southern Kentucky Community and Technological College, Varney sorts students into the houses of Hogwarts and each day a specific house leads class discussion on social issues. For example, the students apply the Harry Potter terminology of “muggles” and “squibs” to a discussion of the disabled and mentally challenged.

Not only do the students use Harry Potter to understand concepts, but they also engage in community service, tutoring, and social media in order to compete for the house cup, which awards the winning house fifty points of extra credit at the end of the semester. Varney also views this immersion structure as providing students with future skills outside of the classroom, saying:

“Once you get them thinking about other people besides themselves, they take off. It teaches them a lot of social skills and problem solving … [and] it’s easier for students to find out how they can work together to make the world a better place. ”

When professors use magical teaching methods like Varney, students are so entranced by the material that anti-cheating spells are no longer necessary!  

The Atlantic recently reported that Oregon has a higher proportion of families on welfare than any other state in the U.S. With high food-stamp consumption, subsidizing, healthcare, and extended time limits, Oregon has dedicated itself to a relatively robust and available social security net. So what explains Oregon’s generosity in the face of safety net rollback in other states?

The Atlantic cites research from social scientists Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and Sanford F. Schram who show that democratic control of the legislature, as well as higher state wages relative to welfare benefits, are key predictors of the size of a state’s social welfare net. Soss and colleagues also write how state’s with a higher percentage of minority group members receiving welfare also tend to be more punitive overall. Oregon, who is 86.6 percent white, has a relatively high minimum wage, and a historically blue voting state, fits nicely with Soss and colleagues’ analysis of state-level welfare spending and policy. As described by the article,

“The case of Oregon highlights what can happen when federal programs are turned over to the states: They help some Americans more than others, depending on where people live, and, often, depending on the color of their skin.”