Browsing by Subject "Gender Inequality"
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Item Family policies or labor markets? women's employment inequality in 14 Welfare States from 1960 to 2008.(2010-07) Tranby, EricWomen‟s labor force participation has increased dramatically across all advanced capitalist democracies over the last 50 years. However, women continue to face significant employment inequality in hours of employment, pay, and occupational gender segregation. These changes in women‟s employment outcomes have captured the attention of welfare state researchers and policymakers and have radically altered our understanding of the welfare state. In this dissertation, I empirically assess how both welfare state policies and changes in the labor market influence women‟s employment outcomes across 14 welfare states from 1960 to 2008. The countries in this analysis are Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, (West) Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In this research, I focus primarily on family policies, a subset of state social policies that mediate the relationship between the market and family, and allow men and women to engage in care-taking responsibilities without losing their labor market position and rewards. The family policies I consider include parental leaves, publicly funded childcare, and family allowances, support benefits, and tax credits. These policies are intriguing because there is evidence that much of the gap between men‟s and women‟s employment outcomes is caused by motherhood. Family policies are targeted specifically at mothers and families with children, and so should, theoretically, reduce the inequality between men‟s and women‟s employment outcomes. However, there is relatively little research into the role that family polices play in employment inequality at the aggregate level, especially in hours of work, the wage gap, or occupational gender segregation. This dissertation fills in that research gap by investigating the impact of family policies on women‟s labor force participation rates, women‟s rate of and share of part-time work and involuntary part-time work, the male/female wage gap, and occupational gender segregation, while accounting for other welfare state policies and activities and labor market factors that have been linked to women‟s employment outcomes. In my analysis, I find that parental leaves increase labor force participation rates among young women and reduce the male-female wage gap. Publicly funded childcare increases labor force participation rates among young women, decreases women‟s concentration in part-time employment and in involuntary part-time employment, and reduces the male-female wage gap. Importantly, neither parental leaves nor childcare policies appear to be strongly related to occupational gender segregation. On the other hand, family allowances and support benefits decrease labor force participation rates for women ages 25-34 and increase occupational gender segregation. My analysis provides evidence that generous maternity and parental leaves and high levels of publicly funded childcare work to reduce employment inequality between men and women by reducing inequalities in hours of work and reducing the male-female pay gap. The finding for the pay gap is particularly exciting because recent research has found that much of the pay gap across countries has been shown to be due to motherhood. I conclude with implications and directions for future research.Item What Would Grace Hopper Do? Reclaiming Women's Place in Computer Science(2019-12) Isaacson, KrisThis dissertation investigated the experiences of college women pursuing computer science degrees at a mid-size university in the upper Midwest. Between the 1940s and 1960s computer programming was considered “women’s work,” but by the 1980s women were being systematically phased out as men recognized the importance (not to mention financial gain) of software development (Brewer, 2017). The percentage of undergraduate degrees in computer science awarded to women and employment in the field reflects the gendered attitudes towards computing. Undergraduate degrees awarded to women and the ratio of women employed in computing-related fields have been in decline in recent decades and are currently at 19 and 25 percent respectively (“Digest of Education Statistics,” 2018; Funk & Parker, 2018). The number of men entering computer science since the early 2000s has outpaced that of women, meaning that as an overall, the ratio of women in the field has gone down (Trapiani & Hale, 2019). Moreover, women tend to leave computer science degree programs at nearly twice the rate of their male counterparts (Chen, 2013; White & Massiha, 2016) and there does not appear to be any one definitive reason why women are leaving. Some suggested reasons include the dominant male hegemony, preconceived notions about what it means to “be technical,” stereotype threat, low confidence, and a lack of female peers and role models. The underrepresentation of women in computing is rooted in larger cultural issues; therefore, sociocultural theory and sense of belonging were the conceptual frameworks used to guide this dissertation. A case study design was selected for its ability to gain a deeper understanding of the women’s lived experiences within a specific context and how those experiences shaped their identity, self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and decisions to persist. Five women, studying software development and/or game development at North Central University participated in this research. The data used in this research included transcripts from two in-depth interviews with each of the participants, transcripts from interviews with the academic program directors, classroom observation field notes, and university enrollment numbers. Seven themes and eight sub-themes were derived from the data analysis, were deeply interconnected, and illustrated multiple aspects of the women’s experiences as students. The concept of duality, where the women were caught up in a continuous cycle of divergent cultural demands, was determined to be the most pivotal theme insomuch that it interacted with the remaining themes and shaped the women’s overall experiences. Five of the themes manifested out of the dichotomous value and belief systems between broader society and the computing micro-culture. The final theme demonstrated the necessity for academic support and mentorship. The findings of this dissertation indicate that there is hope, that there are women who persist in computing degrees, and that concerted efforts to make the computing micro-culture more inclusive show promise for bringing about gender equity. Universities can bring about change and improve women’s sense of belonging in the traditionally male-dominated micro-culture by deliberately building communities of women, providing support, demonstrating empathy, and ensuring women have role models. The findings also indicate that additional research and much more work is still needed to bring about gender parity in the field of computer science.