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In her influential book, The Second Shift, Hochschild (2003) argues that progress toward gender equality has been stalling because the workplace is still gendered, in that workplace norms and practices are still designed for breadwinning men’s life styles. The primary goal of my research is to find the gendered elements hidden in the practices and norms in the workplace, which contribute to the stalled revolution. My dissertation investigates how the increasing prevalence of the norm of working long hours (i.e., overwork) reinforces gender inequality in the U.S. labor market. In my other project, I examine the effect of the gendered process of job switching on earnings growth for professional and managerial men and women. I also extend my research questions to cross national settings, which allows me to test the effect of the cultural belief that reflects the different constructions of gender in different societies. I briefly describe my dissertation project and other related projects below. Please see my CV or contact me if you have any questions about this website and my projects.
Long work hours (“overwork”) are increasingly common, especially in high-skilled jobs. Previous studies suggest that many workers in this profession work long hours to prove their commitment. Many workplaces use “face-time” as an important proxy/signal for workers’ commitment or professional competence. However, it should be noted that increased work hours does not assure increased productivity, and more importantly, it can seriously disadvantage many female workers who overwork less than men. In my dissertation, I investigate the effect of the increasing prevalence of overwork and the continuing gender gap in work hours on women’s achievement. In particular, I examine the effect of overwork on labor market outcomes by asking three research questions: (1) Does overwork widen the gender earnings gap?; (2) Does overwork contribute to perpetuating occupational gender segregation or a “glass ceiling” effect?; and (3) Does overwork reinforce the separate spheres arrangement, where men are oriented to the paid labor market and women to household labor? Findings that address these questions provide empirical evidence that helps us to understand how overwork contributes to the “stalled revolution,” in which progress toward gender equality is slowed by the gendered workplace.
Job switching has become increasingly common over the last few decades. In the past, most workers stayed in one organization throughout their careers, but they rarely do in today’s economy. Moving up the career ladder within firm boundaries has become rare, while job-to-job transition between firms has become increasingly common. This new phenomenon is best described by the concept, “boundaryless career.” My research project investigates whether this new emerging trend of frequent job switching affects men and women’s achievement in the labor market differently. I found that the returns to job switching are differentiated by gender. First I have shown that career patterns are diverging in a way that high-skilled workers gain by changing employers, while other lower skilled workers generally lose by changing jobs. Second, and more importantly, it reveals that among professional and managerial workers, men gain substantially by switching their jobs while women do not appear to benefit from lateral movement. On the contrary, women who have children experience a decrease in earnings after job switching, while men still experience earnings growth with up to two children.
I extend my research to cross national settings. One of the strengths of cross national studies is that it helps to test the effect of macro factors (both formal structures and cultural beliefs) that construct gender differently in each society. In a collaborative work with Sarah Thebaud, we investigate how the association between men’s breadwinning status and their gender attitudes is influenced by the macro economic institutional arrangements found in different types of labor markets. Rigid labor markets lead men to endorse the traditional male-breadwinner female-homemaker arrangement by contributing to men’s ability to maintain a long-term breadwinning identity. By contrast, flexible labor markets provide men with more frequent opportunities to experience non-traditional arrangements. We argue this by demonstrating that breadwinner status has stronger effects on men’s gender attitudes in rigid labor markets.
I am also interested in studying inequality in a more general sense. I am especially interested in empirically finding the cause of the recent increases in inequality. In a recently published paper in American Behavioral Scientist (with Stephen Morgan), we investigate the trend of growth in earnings and wealth inequality. We present the rent destruction explanation for recent increases in earnings inequality in the context of sociological class schema. We also examine the increase in wealth inequality in the 1990s, which shows a more dramatic wealth differential between upper-class employees and others. We found that the increase in wealth inequality was particularly strong for stock equities, which is attributable to increases in the value of the stock held by upper-class employees of their own companies.
For a list of publications and working papers, see my CV.
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