Washington, DC—Despite the surge in coronavirus cases, the economy has performed well with United States adding 467,000 jobs in January 2022, according to a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly jobs report. However, a close look of the gains separated by gender shows that men have now recouped all their labor force losses since February 2020, according to an analysis by the National Women’s Law Center. However, there were one million fewer women in the labor force in January 2022 as compared to February 2020.
The American Sociological Association has compiled a list of experts who can discuss the longstanding structural inequities in the U.S. to understand the sharp contrast between the number of men and women in the workforce. These experts are available to answer media questions and provide perspective for news stories.
Gayle Kaufman is Chair and Nancy and Erwin Maddrey Professor of Sociology at Davidson College, North Carolina. Their research examines aspects of modern marriage, parenting, and family. Kaufman’s first book, Superdads: How Fathers Balance Work and Family in the 21st Century (NYU Press 2013), focuses on fathers who adjust their work lives to suit their families. Their second book, Fixing Parental Leave (NYU Press 2020), offers policy lessons from Sweden and the UK. Kaufman has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Leicester (UK) as well as a visiting scholar at the University of York, University of Cambridge, and Umeå University (Sweden).
Joya Misra is Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and Director of the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Massachusetts. She was previously Vice President of the American Sociological Association. Her research and teaching primarily focus on social inequality, including inequalities by gender and gender identity, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, citizenship, parenthood status, and educational level. She considers how policies may work to both reinforce and lessen inequalities; her aim is to create more equitable societies and workplaces. Her work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Gender & Society, Social Forces, Social Problems, and numerous other professional journals and edited volumes.
Richard Petts is Professor of Sociology at Ball State University, Indiana. His research focuses on family inequalities, with a specific emphasis on parental leave, father involvement, and workplace flexibility. His current projects explore the effects of the pandemic on mothers and fathers, the role of fathers in promoting gender equality, and how parental leave policy design affects perceptions of leave-taking. His research has been published in many academic outlets, and featured in numerous media outlets including, The New York Times, CNN, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, Fast Company, Fatherly, Forbes, Human Resource Executive, Industry Week, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal.
Aliya Hamid Rao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics. Her research examines how couples and colleagues value and reward each other's paid and unpaid work, and how this produces gender inequalities in the institutions of family and work. Her recent book Crunch Time: How Married Couples Confront Unemployment (University of California Press 2020) examines involuntary unemployment. Rao has authored articles for The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and Quartz. Her research has been covered in the Financial Times, The New York Times, and Huffington Post.
Jaclyn Wong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests include gender, marriage and family, work, health, and aging and the life course. Her work is motivated by the question: how do the seemingly private decisions and interactions in couples and families relate to broader patterns of inequality from young adulthood to late life? Wong’s research has appeared in several professional journals such as the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Socius, Journal of Family Issues, and Gender & Society.
For more experts or resources, contact the ASA.
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About the American Sociological Association The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non‐profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.
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