“Documenting Desegregation uses remarkable data to chart the history of workplace integration since 1966, showing where, when, and hence why firms changed. The lessons are many: black men’s gains stalled when Reagan took the White House; white women saw progress until the new millennium; affirmative action played a positive role. This meticulously researched, compelling book provides not only a much needed history of the revolution in the labor market, but important lessons for how the United States can continue to pursue equality of opportunity.”
—Frank Dobbin, Harvard University

“With comprehensive data on private-sector employers, this book reveals the changing narratives of inequality by race and gender in American society from the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through 2005. The Civil Rights Act ended hypersegregation by race and sex, but employment progress for African American men and women has largely stalled since 1980. White women have continued to see gains over the period, but the employment advantages of white men have persisted and taken on new forms in the modern workplace. The sweeping patterns of racial and gender inequality that marked the beginning of the Civil Rights era have been replaced by workplace-level inequality regimes that are shaped by labor-market, legal, political, and normative environments. Documenting Desegregation is a landmark contribution to our understanding of the shifting character of inequality in American society.”
—Robert L. Nelson, Northwestern University

Enacted nearly fifty years ago, the Civil Rights Act codified a new vision for American society by formally ending segregation and banning race and gender discrimination in the workplace. But how much change did the legislation actually produce? As employers responded to the law, did new and more subtle forms of inequality emerge in the workplace? In an insightful analysis that combines history with a rigorous empirical analysis of newly available data, Documenting Desegregation offers the most comprehensive account to date of what has happened to equal opportunity in America—and what needs to be done in order to achieve a truly integrated workforce.

Weaving strands of history, cognitive psychology, and demography, Documenting Desgregation provides a compelling exploration of the ways legislation can affect employer behavior and produce change. Authors Kevin Stainback and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey use a remarkable historical record—data from more than six million workplaces collected by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) since 1966—to present a sobering portrait of race and gender in the American workplace. Progress has been decidedly uneven: black men, black women, and white women have prospered in firms that rely on educational credentials when hiring, though white women have advanced more quickly. And white men have hardly fallen behind—they now hold more managerial positions than they did in 1964. The authors argue that the Civil Rights Act's equal opportunity clauses have been most effective when accompanied by social movements demanding changes. EEOC data show that African American men made rapid gains in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Similarly, white women gained access to more professional and managerial jobs in the 1970s as regulators and policymakers began to enact and enforce gender discrimination laws. By the 1980s, however, racial desegregation had stalled, reflecting the dimmed status of the Civil Rights agenda. Racial and gender employment segregation remain high today, and, alarmingly, many firms, particularly in high-wage industries, seem to be moving in the wrong direction and have shown signs of resegregating since the 1980s. To counter this worrying trend, the authors propose new methods to increase diversity by changing industry norms, holding human resources managers to account, and exerting renewed government pressure on large corporations to make equal employment opportunity a national priority.

At a time of high unemployment and rising inequality, Documenting Desegregation provides an incisive re-examination of America's tortured pursuit of equal employment opportunity. This important new book will be an indispensable guide for those seeking to understand where America stands in fulfilling its promise of a workplace free from discrimination.

KEVIN STAINBACK is assistant professor of sociology at Purdue University.

DONALD TOMASKOVIC-DEVEY is professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“Nancy Folbre and her colleagues have crafted an integrated, far-ranging, and incisive analysis of the contours, meaning, and possible solutions to the mounting care work crisis. A group of stellar contributors offers a treasure trove of information and ideas about how to define, measure, and value care work in all its myriad and often hidden forms. It is an understatement to say that For Love and Money is essential for anyone who cares about care work. Even more, any serious effort to address the care vacuum facing market societies should begin with this book.”
—Kathleen Gerson, New York University

“For Love and Money is a rich and innovative examination of the broad care landscape, including both paid and unpaid care, in the United States. The authors look at care work in depth and in breadth—from child care to care of people with disabilities and frail older adults. They draw a picture of care work as an activity in which all participate and all benefit. This inclusive perspective should inform public policy in the future.”
—Carol Levine, United Hospital Fund

“Based on a successful interdisciplinary effort, For Love and Money synthesizes and then moves well beyond—both theoretically and empirically—earlier analyses of care work. Rejecting the conventional frame that separates love and money, the authors insist on and convey the connections and similarities between paid and unpaid care. Making giant steps towards delineating a new paradigm, the book intelligently considers issues of definition, measurement, motive, amount, form, and value of care work as well as clearly lays out the inadequacies of current policies that address it. The authors show the ways care work is shaped by gender inequality and make a convincing case that gender equality depends on improved care provision. Wide-ranging yet careful, For Love and Money should become a key resource for scholars, activists, and policymakers concerned with helping Americans of all ages get the care we need.”
—Naomi Gerstel, University of Massachusetts Amherst

As women moved into the formal labor force in large numbers over the last forty years, care work – traditionally provided primarily by women – has increasingly shifted from the family arena to the market. Child care, elder care, care for the disabled, and home care now account for a growing segment of low-wage work in the United States, and demand for such work will only increase as the baby boom generation ages. But the expanding market provision of care has created new economic anxieties and raised pointed questions: Why do women continue to do most care work, both paid and unpaid? Why does care work remain low paid when the quality of care is so highly valued? How effective and equitable are public policies toward dependents in the United States? In For Love and Money, an interdisciplinary team of experts explores the theoretical dilemmas of care provision and provides an unprecedented empirical overview of the looming problems for the care sector in the United States.

Drawing on diverse disciplines and areas of expertise, For Love and Money develops an innovative framework to analyze existing care policies and suggest potential directions for care policy and future research. Contributors Paula England, Nancy Folbre, and Carrie Leana explore the range of motivations for caregiving, such as familial responsibility or limited job prospects, and why both love and money can be efficient motivators. They also examine why women tend to specialize in the provision of care, citing factors like job discrimination, social pressure, or the personal motivation to provide care reported by many women. Suzanne Bianchi, Nancy Folbre, and Douglas Wolf estimate how much unpaid care is being provided in the United States and show that low-income families rely more on unpaid family members for their child and for elder care than do affluent families. With low wages and little savings, these families often find it difficult to provide care and earn enough money to stay afloat. Candace Howes, Carrie Leana and Kristin Smith investigate the dynamics within the paid care sector and find problematic wages and working conditions, including high turnover, inadequate training and a “pay penalty” for workers who enter care jobs. These conditions have consequences: poor job quality in child care and adult care also leads to poor care quality. In their chapters, Janet Gornick, Candace Howes and Laura Braslow provide a systematic inventory of public policies that directly shape the provision of care for children or for adults who need personal assistance, such as family leave, child care tax credits and Medicaid-funded long-term care. They conclude that income and variations in states’ policies are the greatest factors determining how well, and for whom, the current system works. Despite the demand for care work, very little public policy attention has been devoted to it. Only three states, for example, have enacted paid family leave programs.

Paid or unpaid, care costs those who provide it. At the heart of For Love and Money is the understanding that the quality of care work in the United States matters not only for those who receive care but also for society at large, which benefits from the nurturance and maintenance of human capabilities. As care work gravitates from the family to the formal economy, this volume clarifies the pressing need for America to fundamentally rethink its care policies and increase public investment in this increasingly crucial sector.

NANCY FOLBRE is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

A Volume in the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology

Honorable Mention, 2013 Best Book Award, Political Economy of the World-System Section of the American Sociological Association

Honorable Mention, 2013 Best Book Award, Global and Transnational Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association

"Beginning from the current crisis in the world economy, and basing their work on solid empirical research, Jackie Smith and Dawn Wiest see in the world polity strengthened opportunities for transnational social movements, their increased capacity to mobilize antisystemic challenges, and a shift in the bases of power from territorial to normative claims. Not everyone will agree with their bold claims, but serious students of the world polity will need to take them seriously."
-SIDNEY TARROW, Emeritus Maxwell Upson Professor of Government and visiting professor, Cornell Law School

"With Social Movements in the World-System, Jackie Smith and Dawn Wiest have broken new ground in the ongoing quest to understand why and explain how transnational social movements succeed and fail in the era of capitalist globalization. Based on their own original and unique Transnational Social Movement Organizations Dataset and exemplary use of the scholarly sources (a bibliography of 400 plus items), they connect the systemic nature of global capitalism and the antisystemic and transformational potential of TSMOs, all the way from UN conferences on global human rights issues to what is happening on the streets all over the world today."
-LESLIE SKLAIR, emeritus professor of sociology, London School of Economics

"A much-needed and very comprehensive analytic integration of the realities of worldwide social movements and their theorization. Social Movements in the World-System permits us to appreciate and integrate the new spectacular occupy movements as something with deep roots in what has happened over the past fifty years."
-IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN, Senior Research Scholar, Yale University

Global crises such as rising economic inequality, volatile financial markets, and devastating climate change illustrate the defects of a global economic order controlled largely by transnational corporations, wealthy states, and other elites. As the impacts of such crises have intensified, they have generated a new wave of protests extending from the countries of the Middle East and North Africa throughout Europe, North America, and elsewhere. This new surge of resistance builds upon a long history of transnational activism as it extends and develops new tactics for pro-democracy movements acting simultaneously around the world.

In Social Movements in the World-System, Jackie Smith and Dawn Wiest build upon theories of social movements, global institutions, and the political economy of the world-system to uncover how institutions define the opportunities and constraints on social movements, which in turn introduce ideas and models of action that help transform social activism as well as the system itself. Smith and Wiest trace modern social movements to the founding of the United Nations, as well as struggles for decolonization and the rise of national independence movements, showing how these movements have shifted the context in which states and other global actors compete and interact. The book shows how transnational activism since the end of the Cold War, including United Nations global conferences and more recently at World Trade Organization meetings, has shaped the ways groups organize. Global summits and UN conferences have traditionally provided focal points for activists working across borders on a diverse array of issues. By engaging in these international arenas, movements have altered discourses to emphasize norms of human rights and ecological sustainability over territorial sovereignty. Over time, however, activists have developed deeper and more expansive networks and new spaces for activism. This growing pool of transnational activists and organizations democratizes the process of organizing, enables activists to build on previous experiences and share knowledge, and facilitates local actions in support of global change agendas.

As the world faces profound financial and ecological crises, and as the United States' dominance in the world political economy is increasingly challenged, it is especially urgent that scholars, policy analysts, and citizens understand how institutions shape social behavior and the distribution of power. Social Movements in the World-System helps illuminate the contentious and complex interactions between social movements and global institutions and contributes to the search for paths toward a more equitable, sustainable, and democratic world.

JACKIE SMITH is professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.

DAWN WIEST is senior research analyst at the American College of Physicians.

“Class may be less visible than gender or skin color, but it is no less consequential. Statistical studies document robust correlations between class and vital events. Facing Social Class digs into those correlations to uncover some of the ways people use and experience class distinctions in daily life and at life’s turning points. Leading scholars summarize what is known in their specialties and set the research agenda for this decade. Their fruitful collaboration as psychologists and sociologists shows that progress depends on an interdisciplinary approach to the study of mind, self, and our evermore unequal society.”
—Michael Hout, University of California, Berkeley

“A fascinating and wide-ranging collection exploring the everyday manifestations of social class. Drawing together perspectives from sociology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and law, this volume explores the often invisible ways that social class shapes our ideas, institutions, interactions, and identities. Susan T. Fiske and Hazel Rose Markus have brought together state-of-the-art contributions from the social sciences to reveal often overlooked dynamics in the production and reproduction of social class in America.”
—Devah Pager, Princeton University

Many Americans, holding fast to the American Dream and the promise of equal opportunity, claim that social class doesn't matter. Yet the ways we talk and dress, our interactions with authority figures, the degree of trust we place in strangers, our religious beliefs, our achievements, our senses of morality and of ourselves—all are marked by social class, a powerful factor affecting every domain of life. In Facing Social Class, social psychologists Susan Fiske and Hazel Rose Markus, and a team of sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, and legal scholars, examine the many ways we communicate our class position to others and how social class shapes our daily, face-to-face interactions—from casual exchanges to interactions at school, work, and home.

Facing Social Class exposes the contradiction between the American ideal of equal opportunity and the harsh reality of growing inequality, and it shows how this tension is reflected in cultural ideas and values, institutional practices, everyday social interactions, and psychological tendencies. Contributor Joan Williams examines cultural differences between middle- and working-class people and shows how the cultural gap between social class groups can influence everything from voting practices and political beliefs to work habits, home life, and social behaviors. In a similar vein, Annette Lareau and Jessica McCrory Calarco analyze the cultural advantages or disadvantages exhibited by different classes in institutional settings, such as those between parents and teachers. They find that middle-class parents are better able to advocate effectively for their children in school than are working-class parents, who are less likely to challenge a teacher's authority.

Michael Kraus, Michelle Rheinschmidt, and Paul Piff explore the subtle ways we signal class status in social situations. Conversational style and how close one person stands to another, for example, can influence the balance of power in a business interaction. Diana Sanchez and Julie Garcia even demonstrate that markers of low socioeconomic status such as incarceration or unemployment can influence whether individuals are categorized as white or black—a finding that underscores how race and class may work in tandem to shape advantage or disadvantage in social interactions.

The United States has one of the highest levels of income inequality and one of the lowest levels of social mobility among industrialized nations, yet many Americans continue to buy into the myth that theirs is a classless society. Facing Social Class faces the reality of how social class operates in our daily lives, why it is so pervasive, and what can be done to alleviate its effects.

SUSAN T. FISKE is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology at Princeton University.

HAZEL ROSE MARKUS is Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Psychology, director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), and director of the Mind, Culture, and Society Lab at Stanford University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Courtney Bearns, Jessica McCrory Colarco, Paul DiMaggio, Susan R. Fisk, Stephanie A. Fryberg, Julie A. Garcia, Crystal C. Hall, Michael W. Kraus, Adrie Kusserow, Annette Lareau, Peggy J. Miller, Miguel Moya, Paul K. Piff, Michelle L. Rheinschmidt, Cecilia L. Ridgeway, Ann Marie Russell, Diana T. Sanchez, Douglas E. Sperry, Nicole M. Stephens, Joan C. Williams.

“At a time of fierce debate over America’s economic future, this fresh and deeply researched book provides a welcome antidote to the complacent conventional wisdom that good jobs are gone for good. One of the nation’s leading experts on the low-wage labor market, Paul Osterman, has teamed up with one of the nation’s leading champions of low-wage workers, the late Beth Shulman, to produce a powerful, informed case for making ‘bad’ jobs better. What Osterman and Shulman show is that doing so would benefit not just low-wage workers. It would also benefit our society and our economy more broadly.”
—JACOB S. HACKER, Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science and director, Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University 

“There is no more pressing question than how we insure that American workers are able to lay claim to jobs that pay well and hold the promise of economic security. Good Jobs America is a powerful, no-holds-barred effort to answer that call. Paul Osterman and his late coauthor, Beth Shulman, do not shy away from the sobering realities: even employers dedicated to the ‘high road’ often abandon those commitments, pushing wages down, violating labor laws, and outsourcing in pursuit of the lowest wage bill. Yet the authors insist we can do better than this. They call for serious union reform, the mobilization of public opinion to pressure firms to do better, and insisting that citizens return the question of good jobs to the campaign trail. There are no easy solutions, but at last we have a book that puts the options on the table. We will be debating its conclusions for a long time to come.”
—KATHERINE NEWMAN, James B. Knapp Dean of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University 

“In this timely book, Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman address an important labor-market problem, the proliferation of low-wage jobs in the United States. Their thoughtful and accessible discussion provides an overview of the reasons for the spread of low-wage jobs in recent years and evaluates some of the major actions that are needed by diverse parties—firms, governments, local organizations, unions—to transform these bad jobs into good jobs.”
—ARNE L. KALLEBERG, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

America confronts a jobs crisis that has two faces. The first is obvious when we read the newspapers or talk with our friends and neighbors: there are simply not enough jobs to go around. The second jobs crisis is more subtle but no less serious: far too many jobs fall below the standard that most Americans would consider decent work. A quarter of working adults are trapped in jobs that do not provide living wages, health insurance, or much hope of upward mobility. The problem spans all races and ethnic groups and includes both native-born Americans and immigrants. But Good Jobs America provides examples from industries ranging from food services and retail to manufacturing and hospitals to demonstrate that bad jobs can be made into good ones. Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman make a rigorous argument that by enacting policies to help employers improve job quality we can create better jobs, and futures, for all workers.

Good Jobs America dispels several myths about low-wage work and job quality. The book demonstrates that mobility out of the low-wage market is a chimera—far too many adults remain trapped in poor-quality jobs. Osterman and Shulman show that while education and training are important, policies aimed at improving earnings equality are essential to lifting workers out of poverty. The book also demolishes the myth that such policies would slow economic growth. The experiences of countries such as France, Germany, and the Netherlands, show that it is possible to mandate higher job standards while remaining competitive in international markets. Good Jobs America shows that both government and the firms that hire low-wage workers have important roles to play in improving the quality of low-wage jobs. Enforcement agencies might bolster the effectiveness of existing regulations by exerting pressure on parent companies, enabling effects to trickle down to the subsidiaries and sub-contractors where low-wage jobs are located. States like New York have already demonstrated that involving community and advocacy groups—such as immigrant rights organizations, social services agencies, and unions—in the enforcement process helps decrease workplace violations. And since better jobs reduce turnover and improve performance, career ladder programs within firms help create positions employees can aspire to. But in order for ladder programs to work, firms must also provide higher rungs—the career advancement opportunities workers need to get ahead.

Low-wage employment occupies a significant share of the American labor market, but most of these jobs offer little and lead nowhere. Good Jobs America reappraises what we know about job quality and low-wage employment and makes a powerful argument for our obligation to help the most vulnerable workers. A core principle of U.S. society is that good jobs be made accessible to all. This book proposes that such a goal is possible if we are committed to realizing it.

PAUL OSTERMAN is NTU Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management as well as a member of the Department of Urban Planning at MIT.

BETH SHULMAN was senior fellow at Demos, chair of the Board of the National Employment Law Project, and co-chair of the Fairness Initiative on Low-Wage Work.