Rachel A. Rosenfeld

Race and Sex Differences in Career Dynamics.

In this paper, career differences by race and sex are analyzed. Careers are defined as trajectories of socioeconomic status and wages and are described by a linear differential equation model. It is assumed that the different groups defined by race and sex tend to be in different labor markets and economic sectors and to face different opportunity structures even within labor market divisions. This assumption guides predictions for and interpretation of results with respect to various aspects of career inequality: initial status and wage level; potential status and wage levels; effects of human capital, family background, and family of procreation variables on initial and potential wage and status levels; speed of advancement. Pooling of cross-sections and time-series techniques are used to estimate the model, with data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of the Labor Market Experience of Young Men and Women.

Work in the family and in the labor market: a cross-national reciprocal analysis.

The authors examine the reciprocal relations between mens and womens family involvement and labor market work in the US Canada NOrway and Sweden. The analysis seeks to overcome 2 major limitations of past research on family division of labor and labor market employment: studies of 1 type of work generally ignore the other and are usually restricted to 1 country. Hours of labor market employment relate negatively to US womens percentage of household tasks and child care. Moreover involvement in domestic labor relates negatively to house employed for men and women in Norway and Sweden (but not in the US) suggesting their greater opportunities for part-time employment as a way of reconciling family and labor market responsibilities. (authors)

Women's Intergenerational Occupational Mobility

Several recent papers have studied womens intergenerational occupational mobility as movement from fathers to daughters occupation. This paper suggests that mothers occupation also is an important dimension of this mobility process. Analysis of data from a national sample of women 30 to 44 in 1967 shows that, when controlling for age and race, a necessary and sufficient model of womens intergenerational occupational mobility includes mothers as well as fathers occupation. Whether or not the mother had an occupation outside the home and what occupation she held, given that she was employed, both affect daughters occupational destination.

Occupational Sex Segregation and Women's Early Career Job Shifts.

Previous research has found considerable mobility between “male” and “female” occupations across the work life. This article uses employment histories from the Washington State Career Development Study to examine the frequency and determinants of jobs shifts that take women across gender-type boundaries. It was found that many women go between sex-typical and sex-atypical occupations with a change of jobs. Higher work commitment tends to slow moves from male to female occupations, and higher job rewards slow moves across occupational gender types. But family variables do not constrain moves to male occupations nor speed moves to female ones. Thus the results do not always fit with stereotypes about characteristics of predominately male and female jobs. The article suggests that further research is needed to identify career lines and career-line segments by gender type, rather than relying on the sex composition of a particular occupation or even job.

Patterns and Effects of Geographic Mobility for Academic Women and Men.

The authors expected to find that women are less geographically mobile than men. Data were drawn from a sample of academic psychologists selected from the 1981 Directory of the American Psychological Association (APA); 311 women and 311 men were chosen in a systematic manner. Job histories were then recreated for the sample from the biographical information given in the 1981 and preceding 7 APA Directories. Some findings follow. 1) Women are less geographically mobile than men. The difference seems to occur early in the career with acceptance of a 1st job. Following the 1st job men and women appear to have equal levels of geographic mobility. 2) Women locate in much larger standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs) than do men. Being in large cities seems to inhibit womens (and mens) mobility from the places where they received their doctorates and for women to slow later geographic mobility. 3) Men who earned their Ph.D.s at later ages were less likely to move to their 1st jobs and to move from subsequent jobs. These effects were smaller for women with respect to moving to the 1st job and absent for later moves. 4) Associate and full professors are slower to move than assistant professors; this pattern is stronger for women. 5) Geographic mobility affects career advancement. Psychologists who moved from the city in which they earned their Ph.D.s were more likely to get 1st jobs that were on tenure track. Since fewer men than women move at this point their immobility put them at a disadvantage. 6) Size of place has an effect on career outcomes. Especially later in their careers being in larger cities hurt both sexes chances of holding high academic rank. Again because more women than men were in large places women as a group were at a disadvantage.

Occupational Sex Segregation and Family Formation in the Former East and West Germany

This article examines patterns of occupational sex segregation for women and men born in the 1950s and early 1960s in the former East and West Germany prior to unification. Given the nature of family policies, we had expected to find an increase in the gender-typicality of occupations as individuals married and had children especially in the West. Yet, despite high levels of occupational sex segregation and clear evidence of the “holding power” of gender-typical occupations for both countries, we found almost no support for the neoclassical notion that family formation influences the gender type of an occupation. This is consistent with previous U.S.-based research.

Women's employment exit and reentry: differences among whites, blacks, and Hispanics☆

Abstract We investigate the determinants of employment transitions with samples from white, black, and Hispanic women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We argue that one needs to take into consideration both family- and job-related factors to explain womens work patterns and that the ways employment and home context combine to influence transitions may vary by race and ethnicity. We find African–American women, followed by Latinas, leave the work force more quickly than white women. These differences are due more to levels of job-related variables than to distributions of family characteristics across race/ethnic groups. On the other hand, only when we control for job-related variables do we see that African Americans, followed by Hispanic women, return to paid work faster than whites, suggesting that these women reenter employment faster than would be expected given their lower levels of previous job rewards and resources. Separate models of exits and returns by race and ethnicity show somewhat different patterns of family effects across groups, while varying effects of wages and occupational variables indicate different degrees and types of labor market disadvantage for blacks and Latinas.

Institutional Mobility Among Academics: The Case of Psychologists.

This paper uses career history data from a sample of academic psychologists to examine the extent, patterns, and consequences of interinstitutional job mobility by sex. Though professors have been characterized as mobile, we find relatively low levels of mobility. This mobility does not lead to demotion but often results in moves that are horizontal or out of academia. Changing schools early increases the chances of being on tenure track but later decreases the chances of having tenure-level rank. We find little evidence of barriers to mobility across types of institutions, although we do find that different types of schools offer different rates of promotion. Women change institutions somewhat faster than men, largely because they move faster out of academia, and they gain less from their moves. However, there is little sex difference in variables predicting mobility or outcomes.

What Do We Learn about Difference from the Scholarship on Gender

What can the scholarship on gender teach us about studying difference and dealing with diversity in our professional and personal lives? Here, I first describe the expansion of research on gender over the last 30 years. This research has grown not only in its representation in our journals, but also in the types of differences it considers — between women and men, among women (and among men), and across national boundaries. Next, I discuss some of the lessons we learn from this research: to study difference in its own context, make real comparisons, look for similarities as well as differences, examine variation within as well as between groups, investigate exceptions, note failure to find effects, allow for equifinality, and move up a level in abstraction to go beyond gender as a category per se. These lessons about moving between the specific and the general can help us understand processes creating inequality. Finally, I illustrate how we can apply these lessons in our teaching and service.

Women, work, and identities☆

Abstract This paper uses the concept of identity to understand constancy and change in womens work histories. Identities are self-in-role meanings such as parent, worker, or professional. Identities are relational, hierarchical, and have consistency and motivational implications for behavior. From a life course perspective, we posit that identities both help organize and also change with the course of peoples lives. We illustrate the organizing role of identities with a continuous-time discrete-state stochastic model of womens movement between job-related identities (employed but not as part of a career and employed in a career) and less-than-full-time employment. The model considers the rates of transitions into and out of identity states as functions of fixed and changing personal resources, changes in stage of the family life cycle, rewards and opportunities associated with the present job and the career line, and several forms of duration dependence (time spent in the state). Data come from life histories of a Washington state sample of women, studied at age 30 in 1979 and 13 years earlier in 1966 ( N = 2536). The analyses suggest work identities operate largely as hypothesized and that the concept has potential for understanding work histories.