Suchergebnisse

Work stress is one key health outcome that is responsive to the work–family interface, particularly to the extent to which work and family life lead to conflict outside of their respective spheres. Previous scholarship examining work stress cross-nationally has highlighted the culturally specific work expectations that shape worker experiences in the workplace. However, those work expectations are shaped by cultural opportunities for women and men. This article adds to the literature on cross-national understandings of work using 2010 European Social Survey data ( N = 4,278 women and 3,712 men) to examine the extent to which country-level differences in gender equality shape the experiences of worker stress in 26 countries. After controlling for individual-level demands and resources (in the home and workplace), the analysis yields two key findings. First, there is an association between work-to-family conflict and worker stress for both women and men, but the association between family-to-work conflict and worker stress was evident only among women. Second, the gendered cultural context shapes women's experience of workplace stress both directly and through moderating the negative influences of work-to-family and family-to-work conflict. The findings have specific significance for understanding how cultural context shapes whether workplace policies can be used as mechanisms to reduce worker stress.

Distributive justice theory argues that individuals make fairness decisions partly by comparing themselves to similarly situated others. Utilizing fixed effects analyses of 4,643 married women nested in 12 nations from the l 991 International Social Justice Project, this paper examines whether the relationship between the division of household labor and perceptions of fairness of that division was informed by such comparisons. Specifically, this paper tests whether political history, women's political representation, and average division of labor within a nation set expectations for the division of household labor against which married women made fairness determinations. Although political history and women's political representation seem to have been directly influential in constructing fairness determinations in 199 1, married women did not seem to use the expectations of (in)equality as comparison referents. The normative division of labor within a nation did not directly or indirectly influence perceptions of fairness. Nations provide a context within which married women make fairness determinations; setting expectations does not seem to have been the mechanism through which context has historically operated. Additional cross-national research on this topic is warranted.

This project explores "virgin-shaming," a phenomenon whereby an individual is called out or made fun of for lacking sexual experience among college men. To investigate this phenomenon, interviews were conducted with 10 men enrolled at one university. Analysis revealed three key findings. First, having sex is often held as a marker of status or achievement of hegemonic masculinity. Second, virgin-shaming is found in social spaces more concerned with upholding masculine norms. Third, virgin-shaming can be used both as an invocation to reassert one's masculinity and, relatedly, a taunt to encourage others to start having sex. Results highlight how virgin-shaming not only creates stratification within some groups of men but also perpetuates male dominance within society more broadly.

AbstractRecent decades have witnessed increasing scholarly and public attention to the status of women in academia. Although women are now the majority of degree recipients and their share of initial academic appointments approximates their representation among degree recipients, substantial gender inequality persists. In this article, we review existing research on this topic, focusing on how gender inequality manifests and unfolds throughout the academic career life course, from graduate school experiences, through initial academic appointments, into the associate professor years, and, finally, to women's experiences as full professors and administrators. Throughout, we emphasize how institutionalized policies and subtle biases, rather than overt discrimination, perpetuate gender inequality. We conclude with suggested areas for future research.

Every household has to perform housework, and researchers know a lot about what predicts who does which chores, drawing frequently from theoretical explanations that highlight the importance of power dynamics. This book moves beyond the existing scholarship by using quantitative, nationally representative survey data to theorize about how power dynamics as reflected in housework performance help us understand broader family variations. The authors investigate how knowing who cleans the house explains how households of differing forms, demographics and compositions operate, both cross-sectionally and over the life course of the household.

An important skill for students, whether they remain in academia or move on to careers elsewhere, is to become critical consumers of research, with the ability to sort out and evaluate sometimes conflicting findings that are reported in the popular media. While traditional sociological methods texts focus on teaching how to produce research, Greenstein teaches students how to understand the research results they'll encounter. He equips students with the essentials they'll need to become intelligent and critical readers of research on families, whether in their work or in everyday life. In focusing on techniques that enable students to better interpret and comprehend scientific findings, Greenstein addresses such essential questions as: Why do research on families? What are the stages of social research? What are the ...

Given the burgeoning literature on the workfamily nexus, the dearth of scholarship on satisfaction with work-life balance is surprising. In this paper, we use multi-level models to build on the Demand-Resource model to predict satisfaction with work-life balance among partnered individuals in 26 European countries (N = 7,990). We find support for individual-level measures of work and non-work lives influencing work-life balance satisfaction. We also document how nation-level gender inequality moderates the influence of family-to-work conflict on satisfaction with work-life balance. The results demonstrate the importance of investigating the work-family nexus within and across national contexts, yielding implications for understanding the 21st century family.

James C. Witte and Shannon N. Davis on immigrant volunteerism in the United States.

Given the volume of research on the division of household labor, this article queries the purpose of continuing to study a phenomenon when the empirical results are remarkably consistent. This introductory article to the special issue asking,"Why study housework?" proffers one possible answer: Studying housework provides insight into the power and equity in intimate relationships. We document how power as a characteristic of social relations, rather than an individual characteristic, has been underexamined in the literature. We argue that by ignoring power, researchers studying housework are missing an opportunity to contribute to broader social scientific conversations on inequality.