Youngjoo Cha

Reinforcing Separate Spheres The Effect of Spousal Overwork on Men’s and Women’s Employment in Dual-Earner Households

This study examines whether long work hours exacerbate gender inequality. As working long hours becomes increasingly common, a normative conception of gender that prioritizes men’s careers over women’s careers in dual-earner households may pressure women to quit their jobs. I apply multilevel models to longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to show that having a husband who works long hours significantly increases a woman’s likelihood of quitting, whereas having a wife who works long hours does not appear to increase a man’s likelihood of quitting. This gendered pattern is more prominent among workers in professional and managerial occupations, where the norm of overwork and the culture of intensive parenting are strong. Furthermore, the effect is stronger among workers who have children. Findings suggest that overwork can reintroduce the separate spheres arrangement, consisting of breadwinning men and homemaking women, to many formerly dual-earner households.

Overwork and the Slow Convergence in the Gender Gap in Wages

Despite rapid changes in women’s educational attainment and continuous labor force experience, convergence in the gender gap in wages slowed in the 1990s and stalled in the 2000s. Using CPS data from 1979 to 2009, we show that convergence in the gender gap in hourly pay over these three decades was attenuated by the increasing prevalence of “overwork” (defined as working 50 or more hours per week) and the rising hourly wage returns to overwork. Because a greater proportion of men engage in overwork, these changes raised men’s wages relative to women’s and exacerbated the gender wage gap by an estimated 10 percent of the total wage gap. This overwork effect was sufficiently large to offset the wage-equalizing effects of the narrowing gender gap in educational attainment and other forms of human capital. The overwork effect on trends in the gender gap in wages was most pronounced in professional and managerial occupations, where long work hours are especially common and the norm of overwork is deeply embedded in organizational practices and occupational cultures. These results illustrate how new ways of organizing work can perpetuate old forms of gender inequality.

Overwork and the Persistence of Gender Segregation in Occupations

This study investigates whether the increasingly common trend of working long hours (“overwork”) perpetuates gender segregation in occupations. While overwork is an expected norm in many male-dominated occupations, women, especially mothers, are structurally less able to meet this expectation because their time is subject to family demands more than is men’s time. This study investigates whether the conflicting time demands of work and family increase attrition rates of mothers in male-dominated occupations, thereby reinforcing occupational segregation. Using longitudinal data drawn from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I show that mothers are more likely to leave male-dominated occupations when they work 50 hours or more per week, but the same effect is not found for men or childless women. Results also show that overworking mothers are more likely to exit the labor force entirely, and this pattern is specific to male-dominated occupations. These findings demonstrate that the norm of overwork in male-dominated workplaces and the gender beliefs operating in the family combine to reinforce gender segregation of the labor market.

Labor Markets, Breadwinning, and Beliefs: How Economic Context Shapes Men's Gender Ideology

Abundant research has found that mens economic status shapes their gender ideology such that men who are breadwinners are less likely to endorse egalitarian ideology than men in nontraditional arrangements. This article investigates how the association between mens breadwinning status and gender ideology is influenced by the institutional arrangements of different types of labor markets. Rigid labor markets support mens ability to be breadwinners in the long term, whereas flexible labor markets provide men with more frequent, but less permanent, experiences of nontraditional arrangements. The authors anticipate that breadwinner status will have stronger effects on mens gender ideology in rigid labor markets because men can expect less fluctuation in their employment situations in those contexts. Results from a multilevel analysis of 27 countries indeed demonstrate that individual mens economic dependency on their partners influences mens gender egalitarian ideology more strongly in rigid labor markets than in flexible markets.

Rent and the Evolution of Inequality in Late Industrial United States

In this article, the authors present the rent destruction explanation for recent increases in inequality, which can be seen as one facet of a broader sociological explanation focused on class-biased structural change. A sociological depiction of the growth of earnings inequality since the early 1980s is presented using alternative partitions of the labor market, including the dominant sociological class schema that (surprisingly) has been used rarely to describe these trends. Thereafter, the authors attempt to strengthen the evidence for the rent destruction explanation by examining the increase in wealth inequality in the 1990s. After presenting these empirical findings, they discuss the extent to which rent destruction can account uniquely for these patterns, as well as other complementary sociological research on the growth of inequality.

Employment Discrimination Lawsuits and Corporate Stock Prices

In this study, we examine the financial impact of employment discrimination lawsuit verdicts and settlements on publicly traded firms subject to lawsuits between 1997 and 2008. Using data on 174 sex and race discrimination lawsuits involving 107 publicly traded companies, we assess the effect of lawsuit verdicts and settlements on changes in defendants’ daily stock returns. Findings indicate that verdicts and settlements have an immediate negative impact on defendants’ stock prices. In addition, the negative effect is more pronounced among cases that involve monetary payouts, cases in which the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is a plaintiff and cases that involve sex as opposed to race or national origin discrimination. These results demonstrate the extent to which legal rulings introduce a market penalty for employers and have implications for the study of law, organizations, and market responses to discriminatory behavior.

Mandating Change: The Impact of Court-Ordered Policy Changes on Managerial Diversity

Although complying with and monitoring court-mandated changes in organizations’ policies following employment discrimination lawsuits can be costly to both employers and taxpayers, little is known about the impact of such mandates on increasing sex and race managerial diversity in organizations. Using data on approximately 500 high-profile employment discrimination lawsuits resolved in U.S. federal courts between 1996 and 2008, the authors estimate the impact of court-mandated policy changes on shifts in the presence of white women, black women, and black men in managerial positions. Policies designed to reduce bias expand opportunities for white women but not for other demographic groups. By contrast, opportunities in management for all groups expand when policies are designed to increase organizational accountability by establishing specific recruitment, hiring, or promotion plans and monitoring arrangements. Policies designed to increase rights’ awareness are associated with declines in managerial diversity. Notably, compared with verdicts and settlements with modest penalties, those with the most costly monetary payouts do not expand managerial diversity; and in fact, they can backfire.

For Law and Markets: Employment Discrimination Lawsuits, Market Performance, and Managerial Diversity1

Drawing on institutional theories of corporate response to the law, the authors investigate if and how employment discrimination litigation promotes gender and race equality among targeted firms. Using data on 171 high-profile sex and race discrimination lawsuits settled against publicly traded companies between 1997 and 2007, the authors estimate the impact of lawsuit resolutions on subsequent changes in managerial sex and race composition. Results show that the impact of lawsuit resolutions depends on the conditions surrounding the resolution. Lawsuit resolutions that produce a drop in stock prices for defendants, attract national media coverage, and mandate organizational policy changes improve white women’s, black women’s, and black men’s access to management, while those that involve costly monetary payouts have no or negative effects. These findings demonstrate how market and legal pressures interact to affect workplace practices and managerial diversity.