Papers by Kevin Stainback
Enacted nearly fifty years ago, the Civil Rights Act codified a new vision for American society b... more 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. (Description from Publisher)
Annual Review of Sociology, 2010
This article reviews recent theoretical and empirical research addressing organizations and workp... more This article reviews recent theoretical and empirical research addressing organizations and workplace stratification, with an emphasis on the generic organizational mechanisms responsible for producing both stability and change in workplace inequality. We propose that an organizational approach to the study of stratification should examine status- and class-based inequalities at the intersection of (a) the inertial tendencies of organizational structure, logic,
Gender & Society, 2015
A growing literature examines the organizational factors that promote women’s access to positions... more A growing literature examines the organizational factors that promote women’s access to positions of organizational power. Fewer studies, however, explore the implications of women in leadership positions for the opportunities and experiences of subordinates. Do women leaders serve to undo the gendered organization? In other words, is women’s greater representation in leadership positions associated with less gender segregation at lower organizational levels? We explore this question by drawing on Cohen and Huffman’s (2007) conceptual framework of women leaders as either “change agents” or “cogs in the machine” and analyze a unique multilevel data set of workplaces nested within Fortune 1000 firms. Our findings generally support the “agents of change” perspective. Women’s representation among corporate boards of directors, corporate executives, and workplace managers is associated with less workplace gender segregation. Hence, it appears that women’s access to organizational power helps to undo the gendered organization.
Public Opinion Quarterly , 2013
This article explores how interviewer gender influences responses to marriage-related questions i... more This article explores how interviewer gender influences responses to marriage-related questions in face-to-face surveys utilizing the 2006 China General Social Survey (CGSS). The specific marriage items examined concern respondent’s views of the happiness of married people and normative views of marriage and ask: (a) whether married men are happier than unmarried men; (b) whether married women are happier than unmarried women; (c) whether getting married is better than being single; and (d) whether staying married is better than getting divorced. Drawing from social desirability theory, this article examines two specific research questions. First, does the gender of the interviewer influence respondents’ normative views of marriage? Second, do the effects of interviewer’s gender on these questions differ for male and female respondents? The results provide mixed support for gender-of-interviewer effects. Consistent with social desirability theory, the findings indicate that female interviewers elicit more pro-marriage and neutral responses than negative responses to the first two items than male interviewers. For the most part, social desirability theory was not supported for the last two items. Gender differences in the susceptibility to gender of interviewer effects were inconsistent across models.
Social Forces, 2011
Building on prior work surrounding negative workplace experiences, such as bullying and sexual ha... more Building on prior work surrounding negative workplace experiences, such as bullying and sexual harassment, we examine the extent to which organizational context is meaningful for the subjective experience of sex discrimination. Data draw on the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, which provides a key indicator of individuals' sex discrimination experiences as well as arguably influential dimensions of organizational context—i.e., sex composition, workplace culture and relative power—suggested by prior research. Results indicate that the experience of sex discrimination is reduced for both women and men when they are part of the numerical majority of their work group. Although supportive workplace cultures mitigate the likelihood of sex discrimination, relative power in the workplace seems to matter little. We conclude by revisiting these results relative to perspectives surrounding hierarchy maintenance, group competition and internal cultural dynamics.
Social Forces, 2009
This article examines the influence of resource dependence and institutional processes on post-Ci... more This article examines the influence of resource dependence and institutional processes on post-Civil Rights Act changes in private sector workplace segregation. We use data collected by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1966 through 2000 to examine organizations embedded within their firm, industry, local labor market and federal regulatory environments. Sex segregation declines precipitously from 1966 through 2000, but we see little evidence that organizations in the same industrial environment have established a stable pattern of segregation and integration. In other words, sex segregation has not been institutionalized. Race segregation, on the other hand, shows strong and increasing evidence of institutionalization, but weak declines after 1980. Firm visibility, field concentration and federal contractor density, but not direct federal affirmative action reporting, prove to be particularly important for understanding changes in segregation levels and institutionalization within industries. Results point to the importance of organizational fields and labor queues for motivating both persistence and change in workplace inequality.
American Sociological Review, 2009
Abstract This article examines post–Civil Rights Act trends in private sector managerial represen... more Abstract This article examines post–Civil Rights Act trends in private sector managerial representation for white men, white women, black men, and black women. We examine how three factors affect changing access to managerial positions:(1) industrial restructuring,(2) the process of bottom-up ascription, and (3) organizational characteristics. Accounting for compositional shifts in the labor supply, we find that white male managerial overrepresentation remains virtually unchanged since 1966, even while other status ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2012
A large body of research has examined the organizational factors that promote women’s access to p... more A large body of research has examined the organizational factors that promote women’s access to positions of workplace authority. Fewer studies explore how women’s access to these positions influences gender inequality among subordinates. Utilizing a 2005 national sample of South Korean organizations, this article examines whether having women in managerial and supervisory roles is associated with lower levels of workplace
American Behavioral Scientist, 2005
Abstract The Civil Rights Act of 1964 stands as one of the greatest achievements in US history. A... more Abstract The Civil Rights Act of 1964 stands as one of the greatest achievements in US history. Although the law made discrimination illegal, its effectiveness, especially Title VII covering the employment domain, remains highly contested. The authors argue that legal shifts produce workplace racial integration only to the extent that there are additional political pressures on firms to desegregate. They examine fluctuating national political pressure to enforce equal employment opportunity law and affirmative action mandates as ...
Social Science Research, 2012
Prior research has devoted considerable attention to the relationship between the racial and ethn... more Prior research has devoted considerable attention to the relationship between the racial and ethnic composition of jobs and various indicators of organizational attachment. Fewer studies, however, examine how workplace racial composition affects individuals’ experiences of racial discrimination or how these experiences impact workers’ organizational attachment. To address this lacuna, we first examine the effects of workplace racial composition on perceived racial and ethnic discrimination. Next, we examine whether perceived racial discrimination mediates the association between racial composition and organizational attachment observed in prior studies. Finally, we explore whether these relationships are similar (symmetric) or different (non-symmetric) for non-Whites and Whites. The analyses indicate: (1) working with predominately same-race coworkers tends to diminish perceptions of racial discrimination, (2) perceived racial discrimination mediates some of the effects of racial/ethnic composition on organizational attachment, and (3) some non-symmetric effects between non-Whites and Whites are found. We conclude with implications for future research.
American Journal of Public Health, 2009
Social Forces, 2008
Scholarly literature and the media often tout “networking” as an effective route for obtaining qu... more Scholarly literature and the media often tout “networking” as an effective route for obtaining quality employment. Some scholars, however, have cautioned that racially segregated social networks may produce racially segregated workgroups and differential opportunity structures over time. Drawing from theoretical perspectives pertaining to social closure and analyzing data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, this article analyses the role of social contacts and race/ethnic matching in employment. The findings reveal that among individuals using contacts in job searches, same-race contacts dramatically increase race/ethnic matching for all status groups. On the other hand, using a cross-race contact, while a rare event, strongly discourages this process. The results also show that race/ethnic matching is reduced with increases in educational attainment and in larger workplaces. Further analyses highlighting the quality of jobs attained through same- and cross-race social contacts show that cross-race contacts do not provide access to higher paying jobs nor jobs with authority. They do, however, increase access to lower-level supervisory positions for blacks and Hispanics.
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2007
Abstract Numerous commentators have concluded that the Civil Rights Act was effective in promotin... more Abstract Numerous commentators have concluded that the Civil Rights Act was effective in promoting increased access to quality jobs for racial minorities. Many have worried as well that the pace of change has been too slow or stalled, particularly after 1980. Few have directly discussed under what conditions we might expect equal employment opportunity (EEO) to flourish. Explanations of status inequalities in the workplace have primarily relied on theories of social conflict and discrimination. Organizational perspectives on ...
American Sociological Review, 2006
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act made employment discrimination and segregation on the basi... more Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act made employment discrimination and segregation on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex illegal in the United States. Previous research based on analyses of aggregate national trends in occupational segregation suggests that sex and race/ethnic employment segregation has declined in the United States since the 1960s. We add to the existing knowledge base by documenting for the first time male-female, black-white, and Hispanic-white segregation trends using private sector workplace data. The general pattern is that segregation declined for all three categorical comparisons between 1966 and 1980, but after 1980 only sex segregation continued to decline markedly. We estimate regression-based decompositions in the time trends for workplace desegregation to determine whether the observed changes represent change in segregation behavior at the level of workplaces or merely changes in the sectoral and regional distribution of workplaces with stable industrial or local labor market practices. These decompositions suggest that, in addition to desegregation caused by changes in the composition of the population of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission monitored private sector firms, there has been real workplace-level desegregation since 1964.
Social science research, 2012
Previous theory and research suggests that workplace gender composition at the highest organizati... more Previous theory and research suggests that workplace gender composition at the highest organizational levels should play a crucial role in reducing gender linked inequalities in the workplace. In this article, we examine how the presence of women in top corporate positions influences female managerial representation at the establishment-level. Using a unique multi-level dataset of 5679 establishments nested within 81 Fortune 1000 corporations, we find that having more women on corporate boards, but not in executive positions, at the firm-level is associated with greater female managerial representation at the establishment-level. The results also show that women are more likely to be in management positions when employed in young, large, and managerially intensive workplaces, as well as those with a larger percentage of female non-managers. Implications for future research and policy implementation are discussed.
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Papers by Kevin Stainback