- Department of Sociology
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-5100 - 949 824-5341 (voice)
Matt Huffman
University of California, Irvine, Sociology, Faculty Member
- Sociology, Economic Sociology, Sex and Gender, Research Methods and Methodology, Social Stratification, Gender and Work, and 12 moreSociology of Organizations, Social Statistics, DISCRIMINATION AT WORK, Education, Sociology of Work, Gender inequality, Work-Family Conflict, Occupational Segregation and the Gender Gap in Workplace, Occupational Segregation by Sex, Social Inequality, Social Mobility, and Stratificationedit
- Matt Huffman is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. His current research investigates... moreMatt Huffman is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.
His current research investigates racial and gender differences in access to managerial jobs, and the consequences of changing managerial demographics for larger patterns of workplace inequality. He teaches courses in probability and statistics, research methods, and racial and gender inequality.edit
Objective: To understand how married mothers’ and fathers’ earnings and ability to telecommute structured their employment throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Background: We weigh two competing explanations— rational choice and gendered... more
Objective: To understand how married mothers’ and
fathers’ earnings and ability to telecommute structured
their employment throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Background: We weigh two competing explanations—
rational choice and gendered resources—to evaluate the
association between married parents’ financial and workplace
resources and sustained employment throughout the
pandemic.
Method: We use hierarchical logistic regression models to
analyze rotating panel data from the current population
survey for respondents in dual-earner, different-sex marriages
who are aged 25 to 54 with children 12 years or
younger from January 2020 through August 2021. We
restrict our analysis to those who were employed prior to
the start of the pandemic to isolate pandemic-related exits.
Results: We find that being the primary earner (i.e., earning
at least half of the household income) prior to the start of
the pandemic did not protect mothers from employment
exits during the pandemic. Fathers’ primary earner status
did help sustain their employment. In contrast, access to
telecommuting was an important resource to help sustain
mothers’ work attachment throughout the pandemic but
had little association with fathers’ employment.
Conclusion: Rational choice explanations help explain
married fathers’ but not mothers’ employment during the
pandemic. Gendered resources better explain mothers’
employment. Mothers who were primary earners were still
pulled away from employment as caregiving demands
grew during the pandemic. Telecommuting supported
mothers’ employment by offering flexibility in addressing
these competing work and family demands, but not by
challenging conventional gender divisions of labor among
different-sex couples.
fathers’ earnings and ability to telecommute structured
their employment throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Background: We weigh two competing explanations—
rational choice and gendered resources—to evaluate the
association between married parents’ financial and workplace
resources and sustained employment throughout the
pandemic.
Method: We use hierarchical logistic regression models to
analyze rotating panel data from the current population
survey for respondents in dual-earner, different-sex marriages
who are aged 25 to 54 with children 12 years or
younger from January 2020 through August 2021. We
restrict our analysis to those who were employed prior to
the start of the pandemic to isolate pandemic-related exits.
Results: We find that being the primary earner (i.e., earning
at least half of the household income) prior to the start of
the pandemic did not protect mothers from employment
exits during the pandemic. Fathers’ primary earner status
did help sustain their employment. In contrast, access to
telecommuting was an important resource to help sustain
mothers’ work attachment throughout the pandemic but
had little association with fathers’ employment.
Conclusion: Rational choice explanations help explain
married fathers’ but not mothers’ employment during the
pandemic. Gendered resources better explain mothers’
employment. Mothers who were primary earners were still
pulled away from employment as caregiving demands
grew during the pandemic. Telecommuting supported
mothers’ employment by offering flexibility in addressing
these competing work and family demands, but not by
challenging conventional gender divisions of labor among
different-sex couples.
Work establishments are critical for the creation and maintenance of gender inequality. Organizational practices, most notably those that formalize personnel systems or target gender inequality, are often assumed to have uniform effects... more
Work establishments are critical for the creation and maintenance of gender inequality. Organizational practices, most notably those that formalize personnel systems or target gender inequality, are often assumed to have uniform effects on inequality across the wage hierarchy. This assumption has eluded careful empirical scrutiny. The authors estimate unconditional quantile regressions with a unique German linked employer-employee data set to assess whether formalized human resource practices, female-friendly diversity measures, and the availability of workplace child care facilities affect wage inequality differently across the wage distribution. While these policies reduce gender inequality in general, they do so more strongly near the bottom of the earnings distribution. Policies that formalize personnel systems and explicitly promote female employees are particularly advantageous to women in low-wage jobs. These results suggest that gender policies have a more subtle effect on earnings inequality than previously recognized, requiring scholars and practitioners to investigate their unique effects at various points of the earnings distribution.
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Recent evidence has revealed that a significant share of the rise in wage inequality has occurred at the establishment level, underscoring the importance of workplace-level analyses for understanding growing inequality. Using longitudinal... more
Recent evidence has revealed that a significant share of the rise in wage inequality has occurred at the establishment level, underscoring the importance of workplace-level analyses for understanding growing inequality. Using longitudinal matched employment data from Germany, we provide new insights into how investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) affect earnings inequality between and within establishments over time. Focusing on the mechanisms of inequality, cross-sectional estimates provide evidence of both skill-and class-biased technological change; however, establishment fixed effects models reveal that this relationship is driven by unobserved establishment heterogene-ity. Despite a strong relationship between computerization and the rise in workplace heterogeneity, we find little evidence of a causal effect of computers on changes in establishment-level inequality. Rather, establishments that invest more greatly in ICT pay on average better wages and exhibit higher within-establishment inequality. These results challenge dominant explanations about the role of computerization in rising inequality, while also reinforcing the necessity of using organizational data to study inequality processes. Published by Elsevier Ltd. The rise in wage inequality across many advanced societies has been dramatic, spurring considerable scholarly and public interest in its causes. Most existing studies have investigated rising inequality using individual-level data (e.g.
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Page 1. WHO BENEFITS? GENDER DIFFERENCES IN RETURNS TO SOCIAL NETWORK DIVERSITY Lisa Torres and Matt L. Huffman ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that social networks can be an important source ...
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Abstract Lips (2012) has offered a useful critique of the human capital approach to understanding the wage gap. In this essay, rather than offering ways to fix human capital theory, I direct readers away from supply-side accounts of wage... more
Abstract Lips (2012) has offered a useful critique of the human capital approach to understanding the wage gap. In this essay, rather than offering ways to fix human capital theory, I direct readers away from supply-side accounts of wage determination, by reviewing theory and US-based research on the organizational bases of wage inequality and other forms of workplace stratification. Specifically, I concentrate on one growing line of empirical investigation–the effect of women in powerful organizational positions–arguing that ...
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The research reported in Patricia Drentea's (1998) article "Consequences of Women's Formal and Informal Job Search Methods for Employment in Female-Dominated Jobs" will have profound consequences for women should they... more
The research reported in Patricia Drentea's (1998) article "Consequences of Women's Formal and Informal Job Search Methods for Employment in Female-Dominated Jobs" will have profound consequences for women should they choose to follow the advice she offers. We believe, ...
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Matt L. Huffman is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. In addition to gender and racial inequality within and across organizations, his work examines changes in access to managerial positions for... more
Matt L. Huffman is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. In addition to gender and racial inequality within and across organizations, his work examines changes in access to managerial positions for women and racial minorities and the consequences of those changes for other workers. His recent work appears in the
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Research documents a wage penalty for mothers compared to childless women. We demonstrate there is also an occupational status penalty to motherhood. Interrogating supply- and demand-side explanations of the motherhood penalty from the... more
Research documents a wage penalty for mothers compared to childless women. We demonstrate there is also an occupational status penalty to motherhood. Interrogating supply- and demand-side explanations of the motherhood penalty from the life course perspective, we formulate and test original hypotheses about the short-term and long-run career implications of parity-specific births. We analyze longitudinal data from the European Community and Household Panel for 13 European countries and eight time points between 1994 and 2001. Our fixed-effects models show that status losses for a first birth are not just short-term but accumulate over the career. The timing of a birth in a woman’s life course matters only for older women, who experience a significant penalty to third births. Although the personal strategies that women use to minimize the career costs of motherhood (e.g., having only one child) prove ineffective, our cross-national evidence shows that public policies are linked to the motherhood penalty in occupational status.
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"New governance” reforms entailing shifts toward privatization have permeated the public sector over the last decade, possibly affecting workplace-based attainments. We examine the consequences of this reform for African American men, who... more
"New governance” reforms entailing shifts toward privatization have permeated the public sector over the last decade, possibly affecting workplace-based attainments. We examine the consequences of this reform for African American men, who during the civil rights era reached relative parity with whites. We analyze race-based inequities on one socioeconomic outcome–downward occupational mobility–among professionals, managers and executives. Results from a Panel
Study of Income Dynamics sample indicate that the “new government business model,” characterized by increased employer discretion has disproportionately disadvantaged
African Americans. Narrower racial gaps in the incidence, determinants and timing of downward mobility found in the public sector, relative to the private sector, during the pre-reform period (1985-90) eroded during the reform period (2002-07) because of widening racial gaps in the public sector.
Study of Income Dynamics sample indicate that the “new government business model,” characterized by increased employer discretion has disproportionately disadvantaged
African Americans. Narrower racial gaps in the incidence, determinants and timing of downward mobility found in the public sector, relative to the private sector, during the pre-reform period (1985-90) eroded during the reform period (2002-07) because of widening racial gaps in the public sector.
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Social science accounts have only recently begun to recognize “new governance” shifts, including, but not limited to, privatization occurring in public sector institutions (e.g., education, prisons, the military) and in the functioning of... more
Social science accounts have only recently begun to recognize “new governance” shifts, including, but not limited to, privatization occurring in public sector institutions (e.g., education, prisons, the military) and in the functioning of federal and state sector jobs. This article, which presents unique analyses of wages across time using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and retested on similarly representative data from the Integrated Public Use Micro Sample (IPUMS) and the American Community Survey (ACS), examines the extent to which these changes have generated significant inequalities for African Americans relative to whites. Most important, our results show that the relative racial parity in wages that once existed in public sector employment has eroded in the face of new governance, and racial inequalities for both men and women have intensified. Supplementary and decomposition analyses further highlight the potential escalation of discrimination as a core mechanism under new governance. Along with discussing the short- and long-term implications, we conclude by suggesting an important corrective to stratification scholarship—a corrective that highlights what structural transformation may mean for inequality and that recognizes important shifts that have made the public sector, much like the private sector, a locus of contemporary racial disadvantage.
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Research documents a wage penalty for mothers compared to childless women. We demonstrate there is also an occupational status penalty to motherhood. Interrogating supply and demand-side explanations of the motherhood penalty from the... more
Research documents a wage penalty for mothers compared to childless women. We demonstrate there is also an occupational status penalty to motherhood. Interrogating supply and demand-side explanations of the motherhood penalty from the life course perspective, we formulate and test original hypotheses about the short-term and long-run career implications of parity-specific births. We analyze longitudinal data from the European Community and Household Panel for 13 European countries and eight time points between 1994 and 2001. Our fixed-effects models show that status losses for a first birth are not just short-term but accumulate over the career. The timing of a birth in a woman’s life course matters only for older women, who experience a significant penalty to third births. Although the personal strategies that women use to minimize the career costs of motherhood (e.g., having only one child) prove ineffective, our cross-national evidence shows that public policies are linked to the motherhood penalty in occupational status.
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Although well theorized at the individual level, previous research has neglected the role of national context in shaping overall levels of nonwork–work and work–nonwork interference. This study fills this gap by examining how a national... more
Although well theorized at the individual level, previous research has neglected the role of national context in shaping overall levels of nonwork–work and work–nonwork interference. This study fills this gap by examining how a national context of gender empowerment affects the likelihood of experiencing nonwork–work and work–nonwork interference at the individual and national levels. Controlling for individual-level differences in the
distribution of job demands and resources, results from our multilevel models indicate that women’s empowerment has significant net gender and parenthood effects on nonwork–work interference. By contrast, gender empowerment equally structures work–nonwork interference for these groups. Our results highlight the need to investigate interference bidirectionally and in a multilevel context.
distribution of job demands and resources, results from our multilevel models indicate that women’s empowerment has significant net gender and parenthood effects on nonwork–work interference. By contrast, gender empowerment equally structures work–nonwork interference for these groups. Our results highlight the need to investigate interference bidirectionally and in a multilevel context.
Abstract Although many researchers have documented higher levels of black-white inequality in areas with a high concentration of blacks, the mechanisms underlying this finding have been elusive. Black underrepresentation in management may... more
Abstract Although many researchers have documented higher levels of black-white inequality in areas with a high concentration of blacks, the mechanisms underlying this finding have been elusive. Black underrepresentation in management may be one such mechanism. We ask whether black workers' underrepresentation in managerial jobs is especially pronounced in labor markets with a larger black population.
We examine workplace-level sources of gender inequality to explore the link between organizational change and levels of workplace gender integration over time. To do so, we analyze the gender division of labor and key structural aspects... more
We examine workplace-level sources of gender inequality
to explore the link between organizational change and
levels of workplace gender integration over time. To do so,
we analyze the gender division of labor and key structural
aspects of U.S. private-sector work establishments, using
longitudinal data from the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission from 1975 to 2005. We fi nd that
women’s presence in managerial positions is positively
related to gender integration, as is both establishment
size and growth. Additionally, the results show that trends
toward gender integration are due to change within
workplaces rather than new, relatively integrated
workplaces entering the population over time. Our results
also provide compelling evidence that the effect of female
managers varies dramatically across organizational
contexts, with the strongest desegregating effects in
larger and growing establishments. Finally, the effect of
women’s access to organizational power structures has
sharply diminished over time.
to explore the link between organizational change and
levels of workplace gender integration over time. To do so,
we analyze the gender division of labor and key structural
aspects of U.S. private-sector work establishments, using
longitudinal data from the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission from 1975 to 2005. We fi nd that
women’s presence in managerial positions is positively
related to gender integration, as is both establishment
size and growth. Additionally, the results show that trends
toward gender integration are due to change within
workplaces rather than new, relatively integrated
workplaces entering the population over time. Our results
also provide compelling evidence that the effect of female
managers varies dramatically across organizational
contexts, with the strongest desegregating effects in
larger and growing establishments. Finally, the effect of
women’s access to organizational power structures has
sharply diminished over time.
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Despite decades of research showing greater black-white inequality in local areas where the black population is relatively large, little is known about the mechanisms for this effect. Using a unique data set of individuals nested within... more
Despite decades of research showing greater black-white inequality in local areas where the black population is relatively large, little is known about the mechanisms for this effect. Using a unique data set of individuals nested within jobs across labor markets, this article tests two possible mechanisms for the black concentration effect on wage inequality: job segregation and devaluation. Results show that black population size is associated with greater segregation of black workers into black-dominated jobs. On the other hand, no evidence is found that the penalty for working in a black-dominated job (the devaluation effect) increases as a function of black population size. The article concludes that discrimination against workers—especially exclusion from better-paying jobs—is an important mechanism for the effect of black population size on the racial wage gap.
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Is gender inequality more severe in higher paying jobs, where there is more at stake? Using a unique definition of jobs—local occupation-industry cells—and multilevel models, I offer the first investigation of how gender wage inequality... more
Is gender inequality more severe in higher paying jobs, where there is more at stake? Using a unique definition of jobs—local occupation-industry cells—and multilevel models, I offer the first investigation of how gender wage inequality varies as a function of a job’s ranking in its specific local labor-market context. The results suggest that net of various individual- and job-level controls, (a) female-dominated jobs pay less than comparable male-dominated jobs, (b) the penalty associated with female-dominated jobs is steeper for women, and (c) wage inequality increases as one ascends the wage hierarchy of local labor markets. However, there is no evidence that the tendency for female-dominated jobs to pay less than comparable male-dominated jobs is stronger in high-ranking jobs. Taken together, the results are consistent with the exclusion of women from high-ranking jobs as well as gender segregation within local occupation-industry cells.
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Previous research linking occupational gender segregation to the workplace authority gap assumes that the effect of gender composition is invariant across occupations, ignoring the important distinction of whether an occupation’s relevant... more
Previous research linking occupational gender segregation to the workplace authority gap assumes that the effect of gender composition is invariant across occupations, ignoring the important distinction of whether an occupation’s relevant labor market is local or national. We offer a new method for defining occupational labor markets and hypothesize that the effect of occupation gender composition on the authority gap will be strongest in national labor market occupations. Both sexes’ odds of possessing work authority decline with the representation of women; this effect is strongest in the more desirable, national labor market occupations. Assuming occupations are part of one labor market results in understating the gender composition penalty for national labor market occupations.
We extend research on both the job search and gender inequality by examining the effects of various types of job search methods on earnings. Specifically, data from a multistage, area-probability sample of adult residents in three large... more
We extend research on both the job search and gender inequality by examining the effects of various types of job search methods on earnings. Specifically, data from a multistage, area-probability sample of adult residents in three large U.S. cities is used to test (1) whether the types of job search methods used (i.e., “formal” versus “informal”) account for any of the gender gap in earnings and (2) whether the earnings returns to different types of search methods vary by gender. The results indicate that, net of worker characteristics, job search methods account for little of the gender gap in earnings. Thus, the idea that formal search methods play a strong role in reducing this type of gender inequality is not well supported.
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Previous research on the devaluation of women’s work has investigated whether the net effect of gender composition varies across jobs and organizational settings. We extend that research by using hierarchical linear models that combine... more
Previous research on the devaluation of women’s work has investigated whether the net effect of gender composition varies across jobs and organizational settings. We extend that research by using hierarchical linear models that combine data from a random sample of U.S. work establishments with metropolitan-area data to explore whether macro-level gender inequality also influences the tendency to devalue women’s work roles. Thus, we offer the first attempt to examine processes that lead to organizational gender inequality in local labor market contexts. Specifically, we hypothesize that gender devaluation will be strongest in highly gender-segregated labor markets. One reason for this may be that in segregated markets, men are in a stronger position to benefit from devaluation while women are less able to resist it. The results strongly support this hypothesis: Higher levels of occupational segregation at the labor market level are associated with a significantly increased tendency to devalue women’s work roles. This finding is not explained by a diverse set of controls at both the establishment and local labor market level. Our findings highlight an additional way that gender segregation intensifies labor market inequality.
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Trends toward gender equality largely stalled in the 1990s, but the progress of women in management was mixed. Given the importance of managers as actors in the reproduction of inequality, and managerial positions as rewards in their own... more
Trends toward gender equality largely stalled in the 1990s, but the progress of women in management was mixed. Given the importance of managers as actors in the reproduction of inequality, and managerial positions as rewards in their own right, this study investigates the relative status of women in management over the past two decades, using U.S. Decennial census data from 1980 to 2000. The authors find that women’s entry into management occupations slowed markedly in the 1990s. Furthermore, after decreasing in the 1980s, gender segregation among managers rebounded sharply upward in the 1990s. However, greater segregation coincided with a decreasing gender earnings gap, which largely resulted from narrowing gaps within integrated or male-dominated managerial occupations. Finally, there remains a substantial earnings penalty for managers who work in female-dominated occupations.