The missing women in STEM? Assessing gender differentials in the factors associated with transition to first jobs

Women remain underrepresented in the STEM workforce. We assess explanations for women's underrepresentation in STEM jobs, focusing on a cohort that came of age in the 1980s and 1990s, when women dramatically increased their representation in the scientific labor force. Data are from the NLSY79, and our analysis focuses on members of this cohort who received a college degree, with an emphasis on those who completed a degree in a STEM field. Our analyses test the extent to which college major, expectations to work in STEM, and family expectations shaped transitions into STEM occupations within two years of degree completion. Among those majoring in STEM fields there were no gender differences in transitioning into STEM jobs, though there were sizable differences in transitions to STEM employment by field of study. Of note are gender differences in associations between family expectations and transitions into STEM employment. The most career oriented women, who expected to marry late and limit fertility, were no more likely to enter STEM jobs than were women who anticipated marrying young and having two or more children. The men most likely to enter STEM occupations, in contrast, adhered to significantly more conventional gender ideologies than their female counterparts, expecting to marry at younger ages but also to remain childless. Results of our regression decomposition indicated that marriage and family expectations and gender ideology worked in opposite directions for men and women. Nonetheless, the majority of the gender disparity in transitions into STEM jobs was related to women's underrepresentation in engineering and computer science fields of study.     

Educational assortative mating and time use in the home

This study examines the association between individuals' educational assortative mating and time spent on child care and housework. Focus is put on hypogamous couples, or couples in which wives have more education than their husbands. Relative resources and gender revolution frameworks are considered as contexts to explain why hypogamous couples may share their time differently than other couples. A series of ordinary least squares regressions with population and sampling weights are employed using American Time Use Survey data from 2003 to 2018. Three, separate analyses using relative education, gender, and all educational pairings as the independent variables of interest are presented with child care and housework as the dependent variables. The current findings show that men in hypogamous marriages perform about 10 min more of child care per day on average than their peers in hypergamous and homogamous marriages, and that this comes primarily from basic care activities. This accounts for approximately 43% of the difference between men and women in the average amount of time spent on child care. No clear pattern of significance is apparent comparing individuals’ time spent on housework by relative education, suggesting that housework and child care have evolved differently in the context of gendered domestic responsibilities. Men in hypogamous marriages are more egalitarian in their sharing of child care. However, this is only true for couples in which men have at least a high school diploma and women are highly educated.     

历史视野下人工智能流派与知识产权法的关系

人工智能的流派大体上可分为符号主义、联结主义和行为主义,它们在历史上与知识产权法各自存在相应的联系.20世纪50年代开始的符号主义人工智能以符号化的知识表征和逻辑推理为主要特点,客观上为知识产权法统一本质的概括提供了新的理论,并可以进行知识产权法专家系统的建构.20世纪80年代兴起的联结主义人工智能以模拟人脑的神经网络和学习过程为主要特点,与知识产权法具有共同的"鼓励学习"宗旨,又在专利客体、创造性审查、创新本质界定和法律伦理等方面提出了挑战.与互联网联系更加密切的行为主义人工智能强调智能行为是适应周围环境的进化行为,其契合了网络时代知识产权立法一定程度的"行为规制"转向,也对相关主体的权利博弈、保护对象的进化升级、智能交互行为的法律规制等带来了挑战.不同流派的人工智能既是知识产权法的调整对象又是其完善工具,它们应当彼此进行深度融合.     

Estimations of parental and self intelligence as a function of parents’ status: A cross-cultural study in Germany and Spain

With reference to the extensively reported gender differences in estimated intelligence, we used a cross-cultural study to investigate whether employment status and education of mothers and fathers (at the time of data collection, in early childhood, and in later childhood) influenced the estimation of parents’ general intelligence. Data showed that mothers’ as well as fathers’ general intelligence was significantly predicted by their education and current employment status. We additionally found a similar relationship between women’s (men’s) and mothers’ (fathers’) intelligence compared with the relationship of intelligence ascribed to their fathers (mothers). Furthermore, women’s self-estimated intelligence was significantly predicted by their mothers’ current employment, whereas men’s self-estimated intelligence was predicted by their fathers’ education. We furthermore investigated how women’s and men’s estimations differ between Germany and Spain. Results indicate that the more pronounced gender segregation in Spain was not expressed in larger gender differences in self- or parents’ intelligence estimations.     

Family leaves, the FMLA and gender neutrality: The intersection of race and gender

Using nationally representative data on the employed, we assess the effects of gender as well as the intersection of race and gender on family leave taking post-FMLA. We find that White men are significantly less likely to take family leaves than White women and men and women of color. Although men across race are less likely to take leaves for newborns, they are almost as likely as women to take leaves for seriously ill children and parents and as likely to take leaves for spouses. Men, regardless of race, tend to take shorter leaves than women. Our results have important implications for the design of leave policy: the broadening of family leaves beyond parental leaves reduces inequality in likelihood of leave; the introduction of leaves for routine family demands probably does little to reduce gender inequality; unpaid leaves mandated by the FMLA may sustain inequality.     

Trends in occupational mobility in Hungary under socialism

Sociologists have long been interested in the impact of social, economic, and political changes on societal openness. Among other questions, they have asked whether the transition from a preindustrial agrarian society to an industrial socialist state creates more opportunity and equality. Using recent developments in loglinear modeling, this paper tests competing theories about temporal change in social mobility in Hungary in the past half-century. While occupational persistence declined significantly between older cohorts of men and women, the decline slowed or halted in recent cohorts. This suggests that a process of restratification occurred after the socialist revolution. Gender differences in mobility are also prominent. On the one hand, women are less likely than men to enter their fathers' occupational class. On the other hand, women's occupational destinations are more strongly determined by occupational origins. Furthermore, there are significant gender differences in occupational opportunities.     

Gendered styles of student-faculty interaction among college students

Scholars have examined gender differences in many areas of college life, but we know little about how men and women may interact differently with faculty—an activity with strong links to student outcomes. Using data from the National Survey of Student Engagement, I investigate whether men and women demonstrate different styles of interaction with faculty. I find that women are more likely than men to engage frequently in instrumental interactions, such as emailing and discussing course logistics with faculty. In contrast, men are more likely than women to have frequent higher order interactions, such as discussing ideas and participating in research. These findings introduce a new typology of student-faculty interaction and contribute to our understanding of gendered pathways through higher education.     

Meet the new boss…same as the old boss? Female supervisors and subordinate career prospects

Whereas prior research has focused on women’s access to managerial authority, an equally important question is the effect on subordinates’ careers when they report to a female boss. One line of thought suggests that female bosses act as change agents by fostering the careers of female subordinates, whereas the cog in the machine perspective suggests that female bosses either willingly or are constrained to promote men’s careers. Using data from the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, analytic models of subordinates’ perceived job-related support from supervisors and advancement prospects were developed. Results were consistent with the cog in the machine perspective in that in contrast to women, men received more job-related support and were more optimistic about their careers when they reported to a female supervisor. Yet, given the paucity of research on this topic, more research (especially longitudinal studies) is needed to fully understand how supervisors affect subordinates’ careers.     

人工生殖法律问题研究

人工生殖技术的出现给不孕男女带来了福音,但同时也带来了诸多问题,其中最主要的是人工生殖子女的权利地位以及如何平衡各方当事人利益.本文主要从人工生殖的定义、分类、子女的地位权利等方面论述人工生殖法律问题,同时浅析代孕这一我国法律所禁止的的问题和我国应如何明确立法保障人工生殖各方当事人的合法利益,使各方当事人之间的关系都纳入到法律的轨道上.     

I wouldn’t, but you can: Attitudes toward interracial relationships

Using the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we study Whites’ attitudes towards dating, cohabiting with, marrying, and having children with African Americans and Asian Americans. We find that 29% of White respondents reject all types of relationships with both groups whereas 31% endorse all types. Second, Whites are somewhat less willing to marry and bear children interracially than to date interracially. These attitudes and behaviors are related to warmth toward racial outgroups, political conservatism, age, gender, education, and region. Third, White women are likely to approve of interracial relationships for others but not themselves, while White men express more willingness to engage in such relationships personally, particularly with Asians. However, neither White men nor White women are very likely to actually engage in interracial relationships. Thus, positive globalattitudes toward interracial relationships do not translate into high rates of actual interracial cohabitation or marriage.     

Socioeconomic background and racial earnings inequality: A propensity score analysis

Does a racial earnings gap exist among individuals who come from similar childhood socioeconomic backgrounds? Is the racial earnings gap larger or smaller for those from higher or lower socioeconomic origins? This research addresses these questions by taking a counterfactual approach to estimating the residual racial pay gap between non-Hispanic black and white men from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The findings indicate that the racial earnings gap is larger among those from lower-middle class and working class childhood backgrounds than among those from upper-middle class backgrounds, for whom the racial pay gap is indistinguishable from zero. Compared to their more advantaged counterparts, black men from lower-middle and working class backgrounds have more difficulty rising above their socioeconomic origins relative to white men from similar social class backgrounds. Racial earnings equality among those from upper-middle class backgrounds suggests that the high levels of racial inequality often observed among those with college and professional degrees may in fact reflect heterogeneous childhood socioeconomic backgrounds among the college educated—backgrounds that continue to have an effect on earnings despite individual academic achievements.     

Enduring an Economic Crisis: The Effect of Macroeconomic Shocks on Intragenerational Mobility in Japan

After the burst of its "bubble" economy in 1989, Japan experienced an astonishingly long economic recession whose gravity surpassed any seen in the industrialized world since the 1930s. While this recession is likely to have important consequences on the well-known workplace arrangements and career mobility patterns in that country, systematic analyses of such consequences are nearly absent. This study examines changes in the rates and directions of job mobility in Japan using work history data collected in 2005 from a nationally representative sample of men and women. I find evidence that Japanese firms have largely retained the core elements of the permanent employment system. The norm that stresses men's loyalty to their employers, however, appears to have weakened, resulting in higher voluntary job turnover among male workers. In addition, the gender gap in lifetime mobility processes has narrowed, but not because Japanese women have gained opportunities in the workplace. Rather, economic stagnation has led to greater fluctuations in employment and wages over men's life course, thereby closing the gender gap. Beyond illustrating the changing stratification process in Japan, the findings have general implications for understanding how economic crises impact employment relations, institutional transformations, and social change in advanced industrialized countries.     

Restrictive abortion laws, antiabortion attitudes and women’s contraceptive use

This study empirically examines the public and social policy question: Do state restrictive abortion laws affect the likelihood that women use more highly effective contraceptive methods? Using contraceptive use data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System 2002 survey, the empirical results show that Medicaid Funding Restrictions, Informed Consent Laws, and Two-Visit Laws have no significant impact on adult women’s (ages 18-44, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44) use of highly effective contraceptive methods. A state’s antiabortion attitudes, which likely contribute to the enactment of restrictive abortion laws in a state, are a major factor in inducing greater use of highly effective contraceptive methods by adult women at-risk of an unintended pregnancy. The empirical findings remain robust for various population subgroups of adult women (i.e., married, single, employed, unemployed, with children, no children and college educated).     

The declining earnings gap between young women and men in the United States, 1979–2018

We examine the dynamics of the gender earnings gap over the 1979 to 2018 period among full-time workers aged 25–29, focusing on the role of marital status and the presence of children. Using data from multiple years of the Current Population Survey, we find that the earnings gap declined among all groups of men and women, and by 2018 there was earnings parity among the those who were not married and without children. The share of people in this group also grew over the period, and comprised a majority of both men and women by 2018. We also find that while marriage was associated with lower earnings among women in 1979, by 2018 it was associated with higher earnings, suggesting greater positive selection of women with high earnings potential into marriage. The positive association between marriage and earnings among men remained stable. While we found a persistent earnings penalty for having children among women over the period, we found an emerging dampening effect of having children over time among men, which suggests that greater participation in childcare among men has led to lower earnings than in the past (i.e., a causal connection) and/or an emerging selection effect of young men more interested in childrearing over time, perhaps reflecting a cultural shift.     

The motherhood wage penalty: A meta-analysis

Mothers tend to receive lower wages than comparable childless women. This ‘motherhood wage gap’ has been reported in numerous studies. We summarize the existing empirical evidence on this topic using meta-analysis and test for several mechanisms which can be responsible for the persistence of the wage gap. Based on 208 wage effects of having exactly one child and 245 wage effects of the total number of children, we find an average motherhood wage gap of around 3.6–3.8%. While the gaps associated with the total number of children are mostly explained by the loss of mothers' human capital during child-related career breaks, the gaps associated with one child are predominantly driven by mothers' choice of jobs and occupations that pay less. The residual gap is smallest in Nordic countries, where public policies actively support gender equality and reconciliation of work and family, as well as Belgium and France, and largest in the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Anglo-Saxon countries.     

Sex stratification in the workplace: Male-female differences in economic returns to occupation

Employing data from the 1974–1977 NORC General Social Surveys, I investigate differences in the earnings attainment of currently employed white men and women age 25 to 64. I focus special attention on the explanatory effects of job characteristics other than those traditionally employed in prestige and status-defined earnings models. The results, based on a multivariate regression analysis and a regression standardization procedure, suggest that a nontrivial portion of the earnings gap between men and women is due to women's concentration in jobs which are low-paying and heavily female and because women are less likely than men to exercise authority in their jobs or to control the means of production. Including these factors in an earnings model statistically increases women's earnings as a percentage of men's by over 7%, accounting for approximately 13% of the earnings gap. Net of these job characteristics, gender differences in industry distribution are not substantively important in explaining why women earn less than men, accounting for only 0.4% of the earnings gap. When single women's earnings are adjusted to take account of their occupational concentration, 10% of the male-single female earnings gap is explained, providing preliminary evidence that the job characteristics I specify are not mere proxies for work experience. Including job characteristics as measures of the context of employment thus usefully extends the human capital and prestige or statusdefined models traditionally employed in explanations of the male-female earnings differential.     

Gender Inequality and Economic Growth in Rural China

This article joins the debate over the effect of market-driven economic development on women's work opportunities and household gender inequalities. It assesses women's opportunities for off-farm employment, the relative contributions of female off-farm workers to household income, and the distribution of power in families whose male members have left for off-farm jobs, leaving women behind in agricultural work. We find that women are not uniformly excluded from opportunities for off-farm employment and that economic development does not uniformly increase gender inequalities within Chinese households. Although men are more likely than women to obtain off-farm employment in China, women's opportunities for off-farm work improve significantly when the coexistence of local and regional marketization creates a shortage of male workers and compels employers to hire women. The relative size of contributions to household income for male and female nonfarm workers also narrows incrementally with increased marketization. In addition, women who are left in agricultural work are more likely to become heads of household, a position which brings greater household decision-making power to female family members.     

Who is banked in low income families? The effects of gender and bargaining power

We use data from the U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances and a framework that accounts for intrahousehold dynamics to examine bank account ownership for low-income couples. We find that even among families who are banked, some family members are not. Those without accounts may lack access to financial services, be at a disadvantage within their families, or face financial risks if their partnerships end. Our results indicate that men and women are equally likely to be banked, but the factors predicting whether or not they have accounts differ. Women with more bargaining power are more likely to hold bank accounts and their families are more likely to be banked. Moreover, individual characteristics of male and the female partners have different effects on the chances that they, their partners, or their families are banked.     

Collective religiosity and the gender gap in attitudes towards economic redistribution in 86 countries, 1990–2008

What is the relationship between gender and the demand for redistribution? Because, on average, women face more economic deprivation than men, in many countries women favor redistribution more than men. However, this is not the case in a number of other countries, where women do not support redistribution more than men. To explain this cross-national paradox, we stress the role of collective religiosity. In many religions, theological principles both militate against public policies designed to redistribute income, and also promote traditionally gendered patterns of work and family involvement. Hence, we hypothesize that, in those countries where religion remains influential either through closer church-state ties or an intensely religious population, men and women should differ less in their attitudes towards redistribution. Drawing upon the World Values Survey, we estimate three-level regression models that test our religiosity-based approach and two alternative explanations in 86 countries and 175 country-years. The results are consistent with our hypothesis. Moreover, in further support of our theoretical approach, societal religiosity undermines pro-redistribution preferences more among women than men. Our findings suggest that collective religiosity matters more to the gender gap in redistributive attitudes than traditional political and labor force factors.     

人工智能与人的主体性反思

人工智能发展给人的主体性带来诸多挑战,主要体现在思维领域,ChatGPT表现出超强的“类人智能”;在技术领域,智能机器开始替代人类从事技术性工作,造成主客体颠倒;在平台消费领域,智能机器助力人类借助资本对人进行宰制。即便如此,人工智能并不会造成人的主体性的丧失,因为人工智能不具有建构社会关系的能力、不具有感性思维,人工智能系统正常运转无法离开人的参与。从本质上来说,人工智能是人的机体的延伸,是人类实践手段的外化,其被人类运用并对物质世界进行探索和改造,是对人类的生产方式和生活方式起到解放作用的一种工具。而意识是人脑的机能,人可以自主构建自己的社会关系,人才是主体。