Photo by Riccardo Annandale via Unsplash Loyal readers and followers of Work in Progress – we’re making our final post here at workinprogress.oowsection.org. Since we started in October 2011, we have grown steadily. In 2016 we took on additional support from the Economic Sociology, Labor and Labor Movements, and Inequality, Poverty and Mobility sections of the American Sociological Association. We’ve also increased the number of fellow sociologists whose work we feature. Both our growing number of sponsors and our growth as a venue for sharing research have challenged our ..read more

by Wei-hsin Yu and Janet Chen-Lan Kuo Mothers have been shown to receive lower pay than childless women across industrial countries. In the United States, research based on women born in the 1960s or earlier indicates that mothers earn 4-5% less per child, compared to childless women with similar education, length of work experience, and frequency of employment interruptions. The pay gap between mothers and non-mothers who are otherwise similar—the so-called “motherhood wage penalty”—has been shown to differ in size for women with different marital status, skill level, and age. We know relati ..read more

by Beth Redbird Occupational licensure creates a right to practice, legislatively carving out tasks that can only be performed by authorized practitioners and reserving an occupational title for the sole use of those practitioners.  The authority to practice can be obtained only from the state, and unauthorized practice can result in criminal and civil penalties. Over the past few decades, occupational closure – most often through occupational licensing – quietly became the norm for a broad swath of American occupations. Where only a small set of ‘traditional’ professions once determined ..read more

Happy Friday! This is our final post of the year, and we’ve got a big 2018 planned for Work in Progress so stay tuned. In the meantime, here are the stories that we’ve been reading this week. The Lede – Homelessness “The Lede” is our occasional Friday Roundup section that provides a mix of a prominent news story and some recent social science on the same topic. This week we are featuring The Guardian Newspaper’s  visually stunning and heart wrenching look at the practice of one-way bus ticket purchases for individuals who are street homeless: Bussed out: How America moves its ..read more

by Arne Kalleberg and Steven Vallas Profound changes in paid employment have unfolded in recent decades, with serious consequences for millions of workers whose jobs, careers, and family lives have are been exposed to rising levels of risk. Though much of the attention has focused on the advanced capitalist societies, precarious work has also grown through Asia and much of the global south. Involved here is the spread of work that is uncertain or insecure, in which risks are shifted from employers and governments to workers, and in which workers lack the legal protections and benefits that th ..read more

  Happy Friday, sociologists! It is finals week here at WIP and so, like a student stumbling in with fifteen minutes left in the exam, our #FridayRoundup is a bit belated today. We hope you have a great weekend!   Sexual Harassment The Silence Breakers (Time Magazine) The Reckoning: Women and Power in the Workplace (New York Times) Will Women In Low-Wage Jobs Get Their #MeToo Moment? (FiveThirtyEight) At Columbia, Three Women, 30 Years and a Pattern of Harassment (New York Times) It’s Pretty Crazy to Be a Young Woman in Roy Moore’s Alabama (New York Times)   Net Neu ..read more

by Stephanie Bonnes In the recent news several instances of sexual harassment and sexual abuse have been brought to light. These cases of sexual abuse highlight how powerful men, such as Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Matt Lauer can use their positions to exploit, harass, and cause harm to others. There has been less focus on how these individuals were made powerful and protected by institutions that both enabled them to harass and gave them the tools through which they could cause harm. In my research, I explore the intersection between bureaucracy and harassment in the context of the Un ..read more

  Today we’ve adding a new element to our Friday news roundups – “The Lede”. We’ll use this space to feature reporting along with social science research on a topic that has been in the news. We hope you find it interesting!   The Lede – Race, Childbirth, and Mortality ProPublica and NPR have been reporting on maternal mortality all year. We’ve linked to some of their major stories below along with some related reporting from Vox.com, which published the video embedded above on race and childbirth. We’ve also linked to some articles on poor birth outcomes more generally in the U.S ..read more

by Alice Sullivan How is socio-economic advantage and disadvantage passed down from parent to child? This is a central question for sociologists and policymakers alike. No one denies the vital role that education plays in this process. However, sociologists have long argued that there is a persistent ‘direct effect of social origins’ on occupational attainment which cannot be accounted for by education. This residual direct effect of social origins on occupational destinations has acquired the status of a stylized fact within sociology, sometimes simply referred to as ‘DESO’. Our recent study ..read more

Graduate students protest changes to U.S. tax laws at the University of Southern California (via LA Times)   Happy Friday (and welcome back to those of you in U.S. who had holiday break last week!). Here is a collection of what we’ve been reading this week.   Cut, Cut, Cut Overlooked passage in GOP tax bill would gouge gig economy workers (Salon) Trump’s Red Line Is Holding Up Tax Cuts (New York Times) It Started as a Tax Cut. Now It Could Change American Life. (New York Times) Graduate students nationwide protest House tax bill, saying it could cost them thousands (LA Times) &nb ..read more