Race in the Workplace and Labor Market Inequality: Dissertation Summary

My dissertation integrates a labor market stratification and an organizational demography approach to investigate labor market inequalities in race and gender. My foremost research concern is to investigate inequality in employer allocation of rewards to minority and majority group workers and, particularly, how the allocation of rewards occurs in and is patterned by features of work establishments. A secondary concern focuses on the ways in which employers systematically sort whites and minorities into different jobs, Analyses presented in my dissertation are among the first to use establishment worker linked data to explore the association between race segregation at the job-level and worker outcomes

Working mothers see penalties when they adjust work schedules after having children

President Obama’s State of the Union address last month recognized that working women—and men—should not face hardship for taking care of their family responsibilities. Recent research by sociologists, Julie A. Kmec, Lindsey Trimble O’Connor and Scott Schieman suggests that workplaces have a long way to go before realizing the President’s message. In new research, they find that working mothers perceive penalties—like feeling ignored and that they are given the worst tasks—when they adjust their work schedules after having children. They suggest that policies and practices that challenge societal assumptions about ideal work are a good starting place in attempts to realize President Obama’s call to give working parents a “break.

Promoting Diversity and Combatting Discrimination in Research Organizations: A Practitioner’s Guide

The essay is addressed to practitioners in research management and from academic leadership. It describes which measures can contribute to creating an inclusive climate for research teams and preventing and effectively dealing with discrimination. The practical recommendations consider the policy and organizational levels, as well as the individual perspective of research managers. Following a series of basic recommendations, six lessons learned are formulated, derived from the contributions to the edited collection on "Diversity and Discrimination in Research Organizations.

Race in the workplace and labor market inequality

This dissertation uses a labor market stratification and organizational demography approach to investigate labor market inequality. The focus is on how features of work establishments shape race inequality. Data come from two primary sources: the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality and the Multi-City Telephone Employer Survey. The first half of the dissertation presents a discussion of the data, measures, descriptive statistics, and a review of methods to generate matched employer-worker data. These analyses reveal evidence of job and establishment-level race segregation as whites and Asians rarely work in jobs with mostly black, Latino, or “other” non-white co-workers. The low correlation between employer and worker responses to similar questions challenges the accuracy of worker reported establishment characteristics. The first multivariate chapter tests three theories of the effects of workplace race composition on individual\u27s hourly wages and job benefits. Data support race-based devaluation; employers pay whites and minorities in mostly black or Latino jobs less and provide them with fewer job benefits than their counterparts in mostly white jobs, net of controls. Results suggest the job, not the occupation, is the appropriate level at which to measure workplace race composition in reward attainment models. A second chapter examines the sources of an establishment\u27s demographic composition. Discrimination theory and homosocial reproduction theory provide the theoretical basis for modeling the effects of a hiring employer\u27s racial preferences and demographic characteristics on an establishment\u27s minority workforce and female representation in blue-collar and sales occupations. Employers of all races hire like-race workers and women hire more women than men net of applicant race, city, establishment characteristics, and employer preferences. The final analytic chapter tests explanations of the black-white wage gap in urban labor markets. Black-white differences in average workplace demographic composition explain nearly one third of the wage gap. A concluding chapter elaborates on the connections between analytic results and existing theories and suggests an agenda for future research

Book Review: Opportunity Denied: Limiting Black Women to Devalued Work

Book Review of: Opportunity Denied: Limiting Black Women to Devalued Work / by Enobong Hannah Branch

Race in the workplace and labor market inequality

This dissertation uses a labor market stratification and organizational demography approach to investigate labor market inequality. The focus is on how features of work establishments shape race inequality. Data come from two primary sources: the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality and the Multi-City Telephone Employer Survey. The first half of the dissertation presents a discussion of the data, measures, descriptive statistics, and a review of methods to generate matched employer-worker data. These analyses reveal evidence of job and establishment-level race segregation as whites and Asians rarely work in jobs with mostly black, Latino, or “other” non-white co-workers. The low correlation between employer and worker responses to similar questions challenges the accuracy of worker reported establishment characteristics. The first multivariate chapter tests three theories of the effects of workplace race composition on individual\u27s hourly wages and job benefits. Data support race-based devaluation; employers pay whites and minorities in mostly black or Latino jobs less and provide them with fewer job benefits than their counterparts in mostly white jobs, net of controls. Results suggest the job, not the occupation, is the appropriate level at which to measure workplace race composition in reward attainment models. A second chapter examines the sources of an establishment\u27s demographic composition. Discrimination theory and homosocial reproduction theory provide the theoretical basis for modeling the effects of a hiring employer\u27s racial preferences and demographic characteristics on an establishment\u27s minority workforce and female representation in blue-collar and sales occupations. Employers of all races hire like-race workers and women hire more women than men net of applicant race, city, establishment characteristics, and employer preferences. The final analytic chapter tests explanations of the black-white wage gap in urban labor markets. Black-white differences in average workplace demographic composition explain nearly one third of the wage gap. A concluding chapter elaborates on the connections between analytic results and existing theories and suggests an agenda for future research

Setting Occupational Sex Segregation in Motion Demand-Side Explanations of Sex Traditional Employment

The employment of women in female-dominated occupations and men in male-dominated occupations (sex traditional employment) is a fundamental source of economic sex inequality. Despite this, we know little about how organizational practices and policies link workers to sex traditional jobs. The author tests theoretically hypothesized determinants of sex traditional employment using data on the sex of the last hire and the sex type of his or her occupation in nearly 3,000 establishments. The results are generally consistent with deskilling and organizational staffing accounts of sex traditional employment and confirm that a different system of sex segregation operates for women and men