Discrimination and Poverty

  • Shelley Correll
  • Cecilia Ridgeway
  • David Pedulla

Leaders: Shelley Correll, David Pedulla, Cecilia Ridgeway 

The Poverty and Discrimination RG is charged with developing a regularized protocol for measuring the amount and extent of discrimination in labor and housing markets. It is increasingly clear that labor market discrimination, far from withering away, remains very prominent for many statuses and in many types of markets. However, because this research tradition is based on “one-off” audit studies and laboratory experiments, it is not possible to compare across studies and assess which types of discrimination are the most important or the most resistant to change. There is accordingly a need to build a standardized protocol for monitoring trends in discrimination across the various types of discrimination in play (e.g., poverty status, employment status, homelessness, economic background, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, incarceration status, citizenship, religion, disability). The twofold objective of this protocol is to make it possible to assess which types of discrimination are especially prominent and which types are growing weaker or stronger over time.

 

Discrimination - CPI Research

Title Author Media
Why Status Matters for Inequality Cecilia L. Ridgeway

Why Status Matters for Inequality

Author: Cecilia L. Ridgeway
Publisher:
Date: 02/2014

To understand the mechanisms behind social inequality, this address argues that we need to more thoroughly incorporate the effects of status—inequality based on differences in esteem and respect—alongside those based on resources and power. As a micro motive for behavior, status is as significant as money and power. At a macro level, status stabilizes resource and power inequality by transforming it into cultural status beliefs about group differences regarding who is “better” (esteemed and competent). But cultural status beliefs about which groups are “better” constitute group differences as independent dimensions of inequality that generate material advantages due to group membership itself. Acting through micro-level social relations in workplaces, schools, and elsewhere, status beliefs bias evaluations of competence and suitability for authority, bias associational preferences, and evoke resistance to status challenges from low-status group members. These effects accumulate to direct members of higher status groups toward positions of resources and power while holding back lower status group members. Through these processes, status writes group differences such as gender, race, and class-based life style into organizational structures of resources and power, creating durable inequality. Status is thus a central mechanism behind durable patterns of inequality based on social differences.

Minimizing the motherhood penalty: What works, what doesn’t and why? Shelley J. Correll

Minimizing the motherhood penalty: What works, what doesn’t and why?

Author: Shelley J. Correll
Publisher:
Date: 01/2013
Framed by Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World Cecilia L. Ridgeway

Framed by Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World

Author: Cecilia L. Ridgeway
Publisher:
Date: 02/2011

In an advanced society like the U.S., where an array of processes work against gender inequality, how does this inequality persist? Integrating research from sociology, social cognition and psychology, and organizational behavior, Framed by Gender identifies the general processes through which gender as a principle of inequality rewrites itself into new forms of social and economic organization. Cecilia Ridgeway argues that people confront uncertain circumstances with gender beliefs that are more traditional than those circumstances. They implicitly draw on the too-convenient cultural frame of gender to help organize new ways of doing things, thereby re-inscribing trailing gender stereotypes into the new activities, procedures, and forms of organization. This dynamic does not make equality unattainable, but suggests a constant struggle with uneven results. Demonstrating how personal interactions translate into larger structures of inequality, Framed by Gender is a powerful and original take on the troubling endurance of gender inequality. 

Normative Discrimination and the Motherhood Penalty Shelley J. Correll , Stephen Benard

Normative Discrimination and the Motherhood Penalty

Author: Shelley J. Correll , Stephen Benard
Publisher: Sage Publications
Date: 10/2010

This research proposes and tests a new theoretical mechanism to account for a portion of the motherhood penalty in wages and related labor market outcomes. At least a portion of this penalty is attributable to discrimination based on the assumption that mothers are less competent and committed than other types of workers. But what happens when mothers definitively prove their competence and commitment? In this study, we examine whether mothers face discrimination in labor-market-type evaluations even when they provide indisputable evidence that they are competent and committed to paid work. We test the hypothesis that evaluators discriminate against highly successful mothers by viewing them as less warm, less likable, and more interpersonally hostile than otherwise similar workers who are not mothers. The results support this “normative discrimination” hypothesis for female but not male evaluators. The findings have important implications for understanding the nature and persistence of discrimination toward mothers.

 

Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium Massey Douglas S.

Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium

Author: Massey Douglas S.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date: 01/1999

discrimination - CPI Affiliates

Bart Landry's picture Bart Landry Professor of Sociology, Emeritus
University of Maryland
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey's picture Donald Tomaskovic-Devey Professor of Sociology; Research Analyst, US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Office of Research, Information and Planning
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
James Sidanius's picture James Sidanius John Lindsley Professor of Psychology in memory of William James and of African and African American Studies
Harvard University
Jayashri Srikantiah's picture Jayashri Srikantiah Professor of Law; Director Immigrants' Rights Clinic
Stanford University
Joanne Martin's picture Joanne Martin Fred H. Merrill Professor of Organizational Behavior (emerita); Professor of Sociology (by courtesy)
Stanford University

Pages

Discrimination - Other Research

Title Author Media
Illegal Migration from Mexico to the United States Gordon H. Hanson

Illegal Migration from Mexico to the United States

Author: Gordon H. Hanson
Publisher:
Date: 04/2006
Housing Discrimination in Metropolitan America: Explaining Changes between 1989 and 2000 Stephen L. Ross and Margery Austin Turner

Housing Discrimination in Metropolitan America: Explaining Changes between 1989 and 2000

Author: Stephen L. Ross and Margery Austin Turner
Publisher:
Date: 05/2005
Flexible Firms and Labor Market Segmentation: Effects of Workplace Restructuring on Jobs and Workers Arne. L. Kalleberg

Flexible Firms and Labor Market Segmentation: Effects of Workplace Restructuring on Jobs and Workers

Author: Arne. L. Kalleberg
Publisher: Work and Occupations
Date: 05/2003
Urban Poverty and Juvenile Crime: Evidence from a Randomized Housing-Mobility Experiment Jens Ludwig, Greg J. Duncan and Paul Hirschfield

Urban Poverty and Juvenile Crime: Evidence from a Randomized Housing-Mobility Experiment

Author: Jens Ludwig, Greg J. Duncan and Paul Hirschfield
Publisher: Quarterly Journal of Economics
Date: 05/2001
Skill-Biased Technological Change and Wage Inequality: Evidence from a Plant Retooling Roberto M. Fernandez

Skill-Biased Technological Change and Wage Inequality: Evidence from a Plant Retooling

Author: Roberto M. Fernandez
Publisher: American Journal of Sociology
Date: 02/2001

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