Unequal Time, a 2014 RSF book by Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel, was recently reviewed by Matthew M. Piszczek in ILR Review: The Journal of Work and Policy. Piszczek praised the book as “an interesting and much-needed expansion on the conceptualization of work schedules that aptly recognizes the limitations of more typical perspectives.” In Unequal Time, Clawson and Gerstel the ways in which social inequalities permeate the workplace, reverberating through a web of time in which the schedules of one person shape the schedules of others in ways that exemplify and often exacerbate gender and class differences. Focusing on four occupations in the health sector—doctors, nurses, EMTs, and nursing assistants—the authors show how all of these workers experience the effects of schedule uncertainty but do so in very distinct ways, largely shaped by the intersection of gender and class.

As Piszcek points out in his review, the book deftly demonstrates how workplace scheduling is a collective, rather than individual, affair. He concludes, “I recommend this book for anyone interested in the broad area of gender and class in the workplace, but especially for those interested in moving forward the work schedule and working-time research domains.”

Click here to read the ILR Review article in full.

Sociologist Nathan Glazer recently reviewed the 2014 RSF book The Long Shadow for the journal Education Week. Based on a 25-year study of Baltimore school children, The Long Shadow presents sobering evidence that children who are born poor tend to stay that way, and that education alone—long believed to be the ticket out of poverty—is more likely to enhance the privileges of those who were already affluent, rather than lifting up poor children. As Glazer put it, “Heavily statistical, the book is supplemented with vivid comments from interviews with the children and young adults.”

In his review, Glazer focused on the book’s analysis of race in Baltimore. One of the first studies to closely examine the outcomes of inner-city whites in addition to African Americans, The Long Shadow shows that by adulthood, white men of lower status family background, despite attaining less education on average, were more likely to be employed than any other group in part due to family connections and long-standing racial biases in Baltimore’s industrial economy. Glazer writes, “Low-SES whites, we learn from the book, get their jobs through connections, through family and friends, while blacks have to get their jobs in large measure on their own. They have much less access to valuable networks through which one learns about these jobs and is initially endorsed for them.” As he concludes, it is not only poverty, but also “the ‘long shadow’ of racism, expressed in so many ways, [that] continues to make the lives of lower-class blacks difficult and [imposes] an unfair burden.

Click here to read the Education Week review in full.