With the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, states must legally recognize same-sex marriage nationwide. The fight for equality isn’t over, however, as many states do not have explicit protections for same-sex couples against practices like hiring discrimination. The Texas Attorney General also ruled that individual county clerks can refuse to offer marriage licenses to same sex couples on the grounds of their religious beliefs, even if the clerks’ office must ultimately grant the license. This is the challenge with nationwide legislation: laws on the books often differs from the law in action. History shows inequality can thrive in low level bureaucracy, sometimes in spite of national policy.

Policy changes take time to wind through organizations, especially those with large bureaucratic structures like the U.S. government. Autonomous managers in the middle construct their own reasons for adopting policies, often distancing themselves from big changes at the top of the chain. An institutional culture affects the implementation of a policy as much as the policy itself.

• Frank Dobbin and John R. Sutton. 1998. “The Strength of a Weak State: The Rights Revolution and the Rise of Human Resources Management Divisions.” American Journal of Sociology 104(2): 441-476
• Bruce G. Carruthers. 1994. “When is the State Autonomous? Culture, Organization Theory, and the Political Sociology of the State.” Sociological Theory 12(1): 19-44

We can see these institutional boundaries in broader patterns of hiring discrimination against LGBT citizens that appear in experimental studies, even when employers don’t intend to discriminate. The history of federal regulation in immigration, the military, and welfare policies shows that the U.S. slowly built a bureaucratic system interested in measuring and controlling sexuality long before public battles over LGBT rights came on the scene.

• Margot Canaday. 2009. The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton University Press
• András Tilcsik. 2011. “Pride and Prejudice: Employment Discrimination against Openly Gay Men in the United States.”American Journal of Sociology 117(2):586–626.

Similar bureaucratic patterns happen around race. When the Supreme Court repealed laws against interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia, for example, mixed-race couples still faced clerks who were often unwilling to grant them licenses. While the GI Bill was a sweeping national effort in which many U.S. citizens got better housing and education, veterans of color often had trouble registering for those benefits in uncooperative local offices.

• Peggy Pascoe. 2009. What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America. Oxford University Press
• Ira Katznelson. 2006. When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. W.W. Norton & Co.

A recently released ACLU investigation a found that black residents of Minneapolis were 8.7 times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses than white residents between January 2012 and September 2014. The report is the latest in eight city case studies, all of which “describe police departments that reserve their most aggressive enforcement for people of color.” The Minneapolis City Council also recently repealed spitting and lurking ordinances, two examples of the low level offenses cited by the report. Recent sociological research strikes a similar chord; it demonstrates how modern law enforcement isn’t just about crime, but controlling groups of people with minor rules and regulations.

Public discussion about crime tends to focus on felonies, but the majority of law enforcement activity today is geared toward misdemeanors. Even without conviction and sentencing, these minor offenses bring more people into the criminal justice system. The procedural hassle of dealing with a minor criminal record means more people are under this systematic control at any given time, regardless of their guilt or innocence.

• Issa Kohler-Hausmann. 2013. “Misdemeanor Justice: Control without Conviction.” American Journal of Sociology 119(2):351-393.

The ACLU report finds people experiencing homelessness are the most vulnerable to this system, and many are charged for minor offenses that directly result from being homeless (like panhandling or sleeping outside). Many cities criminalize these behaviors as a way to control space, even to the point that those with criminal records are barred from entering certain neighborhoods.

• Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert. 2009. Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America. Oxford University Press.

This law enforcement isn’t just about crime, but also about power in communities of color. Neighborhood-level analysis shows that the stereotypical relationship between race and violent crime rates disappears for communities with more African Americans politically organizing and serving, either in office or on civilian review boards for the police. One of the ACLU’s recommendations to improve the situation in Minneapolis is to establish such review boards.

• María B. Vélez, Christopher J. Lyons, and Wayne A. Santoro. 2015. “The Political Context of the Percent Black-Neighborhood Violence Link: A Multilevel Analysis.” Social Problems 62(1):93–119.

In mid May, the Pew Research Center released its Religious Landscape Study, using a sample of over 35,000 people to analyze the religious composition of the U.S. population. Some findings got significant media attention, especially one showing that an increase in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans coincides with a sharp decline in mainline Protestant and Catholic identification. Commentators disagree about what the results really mean; The Huffington Post announced that “America is Getting Less Christian and Less Religious,” while The Atlantic countered American religion is “complicated, not dead.”

Religion scholar Peter Manseau articulated a more nuanced take in the New York Times Sunday Review. He writes that since many of the religiously affiliated still believe in God or pray occasionally, the real trend is a move away from organized religion and toward more personal, private forms of spirituality. In this view, the story of religious change in America today is increasing pluralism, not declining religiosity. But is private, churchless spirituality really the same thing as religion? A small share of the unaffiliated population does fit into the mainstream culture of religious pluralism in the U.S., but this ignores the unique impact of both the decidedly nonreligious and the unique political causes of disaffiliation.

Individualism pervades the American religious landscape, from strict Catholic churches to urban Buddhist groups. Congregations rely on individualistic language and practices to develop religious commitments, and while this can lead to both progressive and orthodox forms of religious expression, it also contributes to the politicization of religion. Michael Hout and Claude Fischer argue that politicized religion repels many Americans, especially younger ones.

• Richard Madsen. 2009. “The Archipelago of Faith: Religious Individualism and Faith Community in America Today.” American Journal of Sociology 114(5):1263–1301.
• Michael Hout and Claude Fischer. 2014. “Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012.” Sociological Science 1:423–47.

While many of the unaffiliated do believe in God, pray, or otherwise demonstrate some type of spiritual concern or commitment, but these “unchurched believers” comprise less than half of the unaffiliated population. Chaeyoon Lim, Carol MacGregor, and Robert Putnam find that only about 30% of the unaffiliated retain some aspects of religiosity, standing “halfway in and halfway out of a religious identity.” Their numbers are exceeded by atheists and agnostics who are decidedly nonreligious.

• Joseph O’Brian Baker and Buster Smith. 2009. “None Too Simple: Examining Issues of Religious Nonbelief and Nonbelonging in the United States.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48(4):719–33.
• Chaeyoon Lim, Carol Ann MacGregor, and Robert D. Putnam. 2010. “Secular and Liminal: Discovering Heterogeneity Among Religious Nones.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49(4):596–618.

Most of the buzz around Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina’s candidacies are about getting into the White House as the first woman president, but what will life be like if one actually makes it?

Just winning the election won’t make politics more female friendly. Studies show that when women enter male-dominated fields, they find it difficult to work in an arena designed by men for men. For example, some jobs involve networking in masculine spaces like bars and golf courses that traditional and symbolically exclude women. When they hit the glass ceiling or find themselves undervalued, many women attribute limited opportunities or personal difficulties at work to problems with individual sexists or difficult personalities rather than a gendered workplace structure. However, restructuring the work environment to center more on teamwork than individual success may help women by giving them more contact with others at work, thus weakening gender stereotypes, providing more networking opportunities, and leading to more promotions.

• Erin I. Demaiter and Tracy L. Adams. 2009. “I really didn’t have any problems with the male-female thing until…”: Successful Women’s Experiences in IT Organizations.” The Canadian Journal of Sociology 34(1): 31-54.
• Alexandra Kalev. 2009. “Cracking the Glass Cage? Restructuring and Ascriptive Inequality at Work.” American Journal of Sociology 114(6): 1591-1643.

With Hillary Clinton’s official announcement of her presidential candidacy—and now Carly Fiorina’s GOP candidacy—we have seen the immediate and constant sexism that will undoubtedly plague the campaign coverage until election day. Time Magazine, for example, ran a piece focusing on Clinton’s presumed post-menopausal estrogen levels as an asset to her presidential leadership skills (we have yet to spot an article on the testosterone levels of Jeb Bush or Bernie Sanders).

Media outlets often pay a disproportionately higher rate of attention to female candidate’s wardrobe, appearance, and age than to that of male candidates, treating women as novelties rather than serious contenders. The focus on appearance objectifies and sexualizes, delegitimizing their authority.

• Caroline Heldman and Lisa Wade. 2011. “Sexualizing Sarah Palin: The Social and Political Context of the Sexual Objectification of Female Candidates.” Sex Roles 65: 156-164.
• Caroline Heldman, Susan J. Carroll, and Stephanie Olson. 2005. “She Brought Only a Skirt: Print Media Coverage of Elizabeth Dole’s Bid For the Republican Nomination.” Political Communication 22: 315-335.

People evaluate “appropriate” roles for women in public office based on gender stereotypes about policy and issue competency more than on personality traits. Public opinion survey respondents indicate that they find female candidates more capable of handling “feminine” topics like education and healthcare, while male candidates are more qualified to deal with “masculine” issues like terrorism and the economy.

• Kathleen Dolan. 2010. “The Impact of Gender Stereotyped Evaluation on Support for Women Candidates.” Political Behavior 32(1): 69-88.

Contrary to expectations, neither higher numbers of educated women nor the type of political system translates to more women in national office. In fact, female congressional candidates win at similar rates to men in general elections. Instead, ideologies about women’s roles and positions in societies influence women’s abilities to enter politics as candidates and survive the primary process.

• Jennifer L. Lawless and Kathryn Pearson. 2008. “The Primary Reason for Women’s Underrepresentation? Reevaluating the Conventional Wisdom.” The Journal of Politics 70(1):67-82
• Sheri Kunovich and Pamela Paxton. 2005. “Pathways to Power: The Role of Political Parties in Women’s National Political Representation.” American Journal of Sociology 111(2): 505-552.

For more on this topic, check out Scholars Strategy Network and Sociological Images

As senioritis infects graduating classes across the U.S., one group of students is denied the thrill of the “senior slide”: those enrolled in Advanced Placement courses. These students look forward to a grueling gauntlet of 3-hour exams on topics ranging from Computer Science to Studio Art to Chinese Language and Culture. The tests are rigorous, cumulative assessments of each student’s mastery of an entire year’s worth of class content, and they have extremely high stakes. College Board, the organization that creates and scores the exams (as well as the SAT), claims high AP scores help students “stand out in the admissions process.” While these tests only seem to target elite, high achieving students, they also impact educational processes school-wide.

AP classes are a source of inequality in educational attainment. Minority and low-income students are more likely to attend schools offering fewer AP courses. Even when courses are available, these students are also more likely to be underrepresented in them relative to their more affluent and white peers.

• Grace Kao and Jennifer S. Thompson. 2003. “Racial and Ethnic Stratification in Educational Achievement and Attainment.” Annual Review of Sociology 29:417-442.
• Daniel G. Solorzano and Armida Ornelas. 2004. “A Critical Race analysis of Latina/o and African American Advanced Placement Enrollment in Public High Schools.” The High School Journal, 87(3): 15-26.

Policies aiming to increase AP courses at underprivileged schools may be one way to narrow the gap, since parent/student demand and school officials’ response in more affluent districts are likely driving the difference. The proportion of upper-middle class students at a school is an excellent predictor of both the number of AP courses offered and the number of students who enroll.

• Joshua Klugman. 2013. The Advanced Placement Arms Race and the Reproduction of Educational Inequality. Teachers College Record, 115(5):1-34.
• Thurston Domina and Joshua Saldana. 2012. Does Raising the Bar Level the Playing Field? Mathematics curricular intensification and inequality in American high schools, 1982–2004. American Educational Research Journal, 49(4): 685-708.

AP tests weren’t always used in college admissions. They were originally designed to allow high-achieving students to place out of introductory courses and into more advanced college work. Only in recent years have they become an important indicator for college admissions boards.

• Saul Geiser and Veronica Santelices. 2004. The Role of Advanced Placement and Honors Courses in College Admissions. Expanding opportunity in higher education: Leveraging promise, 75-113.

AP testing culture affects all students, no matter where they’re tracked. In most cases, tests change curricula by narrowing content to tested subjects, fragmenting content area knowledge into test-related pieces, and increasing teacher-centered instruction. However, certain types of high-stakes tests can encourage curricular content expansion, integration of knowledge, and cooperative learning.

• Wayne Au. 2007. “High-stakes Testing and Curricular Control: A qualitative metasynthesis.” Educational Researcher (36)5:258-267.

In addition to current labor activism, movements for economic justice have also emerged from students, retirees, consumers, and other communities outside traditional unions and leftist political parties. Today’s mass movements range from the Indignados movement in Spain to Occupy in the U.S. to anti-austerity protests in Greece to massive student demonstrations in Chile. Protestors are contesting the inevitability of privatization, cuts to public spending, and rising inequality, among other issues worldwide.

• Wolfgang Rudig and Georgios Karyotis. 2013. “Beyond The Usual Suspects? New Participants In Anti-Austerity Protests In Greece.” Mobilization: An International Journal 18(3):313–30.
• Ruth Milkman, Penny Lewis, and Stephanie Luce. 2013. “The Genie’s out of the Bottle: Insiders’ Perspectives on Occupy Wall Street.” The Sociological Quarterly 54(2):194–98.
• Cesar Guzman-Concha. 2012. “The Students’ Rebellion in Chile: Occupy Protest or Classic Social Movement?” Social Movement Studies 11(3-4):408–15.
• Ernesto Castañeda. 2012. “The Indignados of Spain: A Precedent to Occupy Wall Street.” Social Movement Studies 11(3-4):309–19.

Read Part I (The U.S. & Inequality) and Part II (Global Labor).

Free trade globalization has had largely negative impacts on workers by driving down wages and allowing capital to move when workers organize and demand better pay and working conditions. Free trade agreements like NAFTA have also destroyed local industries and hurt farmers in the global South who cannot compete with cheap products from the U.S.

Global trade also creates new possibilities for the workers of the world to unite. Transnational organizing campaigns targeted at multinational companies and global union federations have made concrete gains, helping workers improve working conditions and build working-class power.

• Tamara Kay. 2005. “Labor Transnationalism and Global Governance: The Impact of NAFTA on Transnational Labor Relationships in North America.” American Journal of Sociology 111(3):715–56.
• Jamie K. McCallum. 2013. Global Unions, Local Power: The New Spirit of Transnational Labor Organizing. Cornell University Press.
• Gay W. Seidman. 2007. Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Jill Louise Esbenshade. 2009. Monitoring Sweatshops: Workers, Consumers, and the Global Apparel Industry. Temple University Press.

Even in sweatshops and among immigrants in precarious jobs, workers are finding new ways of organizing. Workers in the global South are protesting and unionizing in factories that make consumer goods, despite state repression and the power of multi-national corporations. Migrant workers in the informal sectors of the U.S. are getting around the barriers of labor law to organize outside traditional unions.

• Janice Ruth Fine. 2006. Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream. Cornell University Press.
• Ching Kwan Lee. 2007. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt. University of California Press.
• Biju Mathew. 2005. Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City. Cornell University Press.
• Ruth Milkman and Ed Ott. 2014. New Labor in New York: Precarious Workers and the Future of the Labor Movement. Cornell University Press.

Read May Day Part I: The U.S. and Inequality

Workers of the World, Unite!

Since the late 1800s May Day—the first of May and a traditional European spring celebration—has been recognized as International Workers Day. It’s a time to celebrate working people and the possibilities for international solidarity. On May Day 2015, the state of workers looks rather grim: expanding inequality, increasing fiscal austerity, and degrading working conditions. Amid these negative trends, though, there are glimmers of hope as global workers organize and mobilize to assert their rights, curtail corporate power, and create a more equitable world.

To mark May Day, we are exploring issues of inequality, labor, and social movements in a three-part series.

Part I: The U.S. & Inequality

Deregulation, privatization, and declining unionization have exacerbated the gulf between rich and poor in the past 50 years. Researchers have documented how much of the increase in wage inequality is due to the weakening of policies and institutions that have historically protected and empowered workers—unions, minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, and labor law—in addition to structural changes in the economy and labor market.

• ChangHwan Kim and Arthur Sakamoto. 2010. “Assessing the Consequences of Declining Unionization and Public-Sector Employment: A Density-Function Decomposition of Rising Inequality From 1983 to 2005.” Work and Occupations 37(2):119–61.
• Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld. 2011. “Unions, Norms, and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality.” American Sociological Review 76(4):513–37.
• Winfried Koeniger, Marco Leonardi, and Luca Nunzjata. 2007. “Labor Market Institutions And Wage Inequality.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 60(3):340–56.

Read May Day Part II: Global Labor. There’s Research on That!

Read May Day Part III: Social & Political Movements. There’s Research on That!

A recent scholarly article in the Journal of Marriage and Family by Melissa Milkie, Kei Nomaguchi, and Kathleen Denny (first covered in the Washington Post) has sparked a plethora of commentary in the news media, including several critiques by Justin Wolfers of The Upshot, and a convincing response by the authors in the Washington Post. Using high-quality time use data from a national panel study, Milkie, Nomaguchi, and Denny found that the overall amount of time mothers spend with either adolescents or younger children does not matter for their children’s behaviors, emotions, or academics. What do sociologists know about the impact of parenting time on children’s wellbeing?

First, the kind of parenting time matters. Time mothers spend engaging with children makes more of a difference than the time mothers are available to or are supervising their children. So being long on love but short on time isn’t a bad thing. Engaged maternal time is related to fewer delinquent behaviors among adolescents, and engaged time with both parents was related to better outcomes for adolescents. Other studies show too much “unstructured” parental time, such as watching TV together, may actually be worse for some children under age 6, and that the quality of parent-child relationships factors in. Family dinners contribute to fewer depressive symptoms and less delinquency among adolescents, but only when parent-child relationships are strong.

• Melissa A. Milkie, Kei M. Nomaguchi, and Kathleen E. Denny. 2015. “Does the Amount of Time Mothers Spend With Children or Adolescents Matter?” Journal of Marriage and Family 77(2):355–72.
• Amy Hsin and Christina Felfe. 2014. “When Does Time Matter? Maternal Employment, Children’s Time With Parents, and Child Development,” Demography 51(5):1867–94.
• Ann Meier and Kelly Musick. 2014. “Variation in Associations Between Family Dinners and Adolescent Well-Being,” Journal of Marriage and Family 76(1):13–23.

Why did this finding spark such a media response? In part, it’s because society believes ideal mothering means spending lots of time with children. Many parents strive to attain this ideal, but many working mothers who cannot attain it must redefine their definition of a “good mother” to fit with work responsibilities. Still, working mothers today spend more time with their children than employed mothers in the past.

• Sharon Hays. 1998. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Annette Lareau. 2003. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Karen Christopher. 2012. “Extensive Mothering: Employed Mothers’ Constructions of the Good Mother,” Gender & Society 26(1):73–96.
• Liana Fox, Wen-Jui Han, Christopher Ruhm, and Jane Waldfogel. 2013. “Time for Children: Trends in the Employment Patterns of Parents, 1967–2009,” Demography 50(1):25–49.

For more on the original article and the critiques, see Sociological Images.