For the past decade, major technology companies have grappled with the underrepresentation of women in their industry, especially in technical roles like software engineering. Much of the conversation surrounding gender inequality in the tech industry focuses on the educational pipeline: specifically, the relatively low proportions of women graduating with computer science degrees.

In a new article in the American Journal of Sociology, I argue that women are not only underrepresented in these technical roles because they lack educational credentials but because they are not given the same opportunities as men to learn relevant skills on the job. 

In the gig economy, the customer isn’t king. They’re the emperor.

Workers on Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit, Instacart, Fiverr, Upwork, and other labor platforms are at the mercy of algorithms that funnel jobs their way based on customer ratings. The better ratings, the better the assignments. By using customers for control, the platforms have ditched traditional management and gained tremendous efficiencies for themselves and for their customers. Who doesn’t love the ease of calling a rideshare to their exact location with a few taps on a cellphone, compared with standing on a street corner to hail a cab?

A large share of higher education media attention focuses on selective colleges and universities, from Congressional hearings featuring “Ivy-plus” university presidents to the “operation varsity blues” scandal. These institutions represent only a small subset of higher education, yet attention to them is well warranted. Enrollment at a high-status undergraduate institution is often a passport to lucrative careers or a prestigious graduate education.

Historians, sociologists and higher education scholars have called attention to the role of highly selective institutions as bastions of privilege. Two former presidents of such universities, William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, traced the flow of racially minoritized students through these institutions in their classic book The Shape of the River.

The paradoxical promotion advantages of men in jobs dominated by women

Management promotions come with pay raises and a voice in workplace decisions. It is well-known that men receive promotions more often than women – but men’s promotion advantages relative to their female colleagues grow with the share of women in jobs. Therefore, men ride an invisible “glass escalator” that fast-tracks them into managerial promotions, especially in jobs that employ more women.

In a recently published paper, we ask: Is the glass escalator the same in all workplaces, or does it slow in workplaces predominantly employing women?

Occupations are a key source of identity in modern social life. But what exactly do contemporary occupational identities look like? In the heyday of Western industrialization, sociologist Émile Durkheim conceived of occupations as cohesive social groupings, or “small classes,” whose rooting in the division of labor meant that they provided workers with exclusive and powerful identities – as miners, nurses, or professors. In recent decades, however, the rise of postindustrial forms of work has transformed the Durkheimian landscape. As employment becomes more contingent and labor is increasingly project-based, workers’ ties to their jobs are not as strong as they used to be. It is unclear, however, how this shift away from the industrial regime has transformed occupational identities. How do workers identify with occupations in the postindustrial era?

Getting a job can be a challenge for anyone, especially in a tough economy. But for people with criminal records, the task of finding a job is particularly difficult. Experiments show that job applicants with criminal records have lower chances of getting an interview or job than those without records, and that the chances are even lower for people of color. While 8% of adult men have a felony criminal record, that number is 33% for Black men. Thus, many employers’ unwillingness to provide a second chance by hiring those with criminal records is especially impactful for Black people.

Employers often obtain criminal record information about applicants during the application process. Some ask criminal record questions on job applications or request formal criminal background checks, with a warning of a background check typically stated right on the application. Thus, when an applicant with a criminal record goes to apply for a job, they often see on the application itself that their record will become known to the employer.

The question of whether Millennials are doing better or worse than previous generations remains a highly debated subject. Millennials are often positioned as the victims of changes in American society that have made employment and family life less stable, rendering them, according to some observers, “the first generation that is worse off than their parents”. A recent article challenged the “myth of the broke Millennial”, however, claiming that they are actually thriving.

Framing the question in this way is somewhat misleading. It suggests that there is a typical or average Millennial, who we can compare to the average Baby Boomer. Millennials are so different from one another, however, that it is not particularly meaningful to talk about the ‘average’ Millennial experience. There are some Millennials who are doing extremely well—think Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman—while others are struggling.

The Baby Boomers are similarly internally divided: those who went to university and found middle class jobs had very different experiences and life outcomes compared to those in working class occupations. Comparing generations in terms of their average economic outcomes overlooks the vast discrepancies within generations. Instead, we should ask which Millennials were better or worse off than previous generations.