Gender wage differences and human capital in the early twentieth century: the case of the paper box industry in New York

Women employed in the New York paper box industry in 1913–1914 earned about 60% of what men did. This paper employs the human capital framework to analyze the wage differential due to productivity related factors versus discriminatory nepotism towards men. Years of schooling, years of experience in the paper box trade, and legislative restrictions on working hours of women account for virtually all of the observed wage differential, both for all men and women in the paper box industry, and between the skilled occupations of cutters and strippers.

“Me,the street,and a backpack”: employment,income, and physical capital in rural recovery

ABSTRACT

Recovery capital is a framework for understanding individuals’ resources for recovery from substance misuse. In a qualitative analysis of rural individuals in recovery (N = 49), the role of physical capital emerged prominently across ten focus groups. Participants highlighted the effects of employment status, income, and other forms of physical capital directly, as well as indirect effects through changes in human capital. Negative cultural capital components, in the form of stigma and employment discrimination, were described as barriers to physical capital acquisition and successful recovery. Based on these findings, we discuss rural recovery challenges and propose a model of recovery capital interactions.     

Social capital,human capital,and career success in public relations in Taiwan

This study examined the degree to which demographic, human capital, and social capital variables can predict career success for public relations practitioners in Taiwan. Social capital includes two dimensions: social trust and social network. Human capital includes education, rank, career tenure, and motivation. Public relations practitioners (150) from 16 agencies in Taiwan were interviewed in 2006. Social capital explained the significant variance in subjective career success. As for human capital, motivation negatively predicted job comfort, but positively predicted challenge and task significance. Career tenure and rank in the agency positively predicted autonomy, while only age and professional tenure predicted objective success. This study also revealed that the longer the practitioners stay in the business, the more the sense of autonomy, financial rewards, and support they have. Combined with the results of objective career success, career tenure is the best predictor for career success among all the variables in human capital. Since gender does not predict career success, we may infer that public relations practice in Taiwan does not seem hostile to women.     

Gender,social change,and the professions: The case of pharmacy

This paper examines the nature of increasing female entry into the profession of pharmacy. Using data from a survey of Ontario pharmacists, it compares the work experiences and career paths of 668 men and women in the profession. In terms of hours worked, where they work, and the nature of the work that they do, we found considerable differences between males and females that are becoming increasingly pronounced as more women enter the profession. These findings are then discussed in terms of available theories of gender, professions and social change.     

Gender bias in performance evaluations: The impact of gender quotas

The intention behind imposing quotas for women on corporate boards is to close the gender gap in economic participation and help women to be promoted within organizations. However, the broader social psychological literature lends support to ideas that affirmative action policies, such as quotas, may do more harm than good for the beneficiaries. We extend this idea beyond the affected beneficiaries and ask whether this unintended negative effect spills over to women who are not immediate targets of the quota, by signaling incompetence. We develop an experimental design to investigate whether the announcement (study 1) and the implementation (study 2) of a quota for women have a direct negative effect on performance evaluations and hence reinforce the existing gender bias in evaluation. We observed that the performance of women was evaluated significantly lower than that of men. However, this gender bias was limited to sequential (rating) evaluations and was not evident in joint (ranking) evaluations. The quota did not significantly influence the amount of this bias. In addition, we observed more pronounced sexism in males compared to females. Results of study 2 gave a hint to an association between higher sexism and lower evaluations of women’s performance. We also found some evidence for a stronger evaluation bias in females when controlling for sexist attitudes. Hence, our results imply that the bias, which is overall quite robust and strongly pronounced, is still affected by individual gender-related characteristics.     

Explaining gender segregation

Occupational gender segregation--the tendency for women and men to work in different occupations--is an important feature of all societies, and particularly the wealthy industrialized ones. To understand this segregation, and to explain its significance, we need to distinguish between vertical segregation entailing inequality and horizontal segregation representing difference without inequality, with overall segregation being the resultant of these components. Three major theoretical approaches to understanding occupational gender segregation are examined: human capital/rational choice, patriarchy, and preference theories. All are found to be inadequate; they tend to confuse overall segregation with its vertical component, and each entails a number of other faults. It is generally assumed or implied that greater empowerment of women would reduce gender segregation. This is the reverse of what actually happens; in countries where the degree of women's empowerment is greater, the level of gender segregation is also greater. An alternative theoretical approach based on processes of social reproduction is shown to be more useful.     

Investigating the role of multilevel social capital in ethnic income inequality in the Chinese labour market

This study examines to what extent individual- and county-level social capital respectively and jointly explain the Chinese ethnic income inequality. Using two waves of the Chinese General Social Survey data, social capital is operationalised into extensivity, upper reachability, mean prestige, and range via the position generator. Results show that social capital is unevenly distributed along the ethnic line in China, minorities are in disadvantaged position in accessing social capital, especially the number of occupation accessed and mean occupational prestige, compared with Han. When cross-level interactions are taken into account, with the increase of county-level social capital, its positive effect on minorities’ income attenuates while it become stronger for Han’s income. The differential returns of social capital on income between minorities and Han may be attributable to the mean prestige of their accessed position networks. Finally, the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis uncovers that when all variables are controlled for, there is still approximately 24 % of the income gap between minorities and Han remained unexplained, indicating the severe ethnic wage penalty minorities are facing in the Chinese labour market.     

Translating Bourdieu: cultural capital and the English middle class in historical perspective

This article examines the ways in which Pierre Bourdieu's work on culture and cultural capital can be applied to the study of the English middle class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing on a wide historical literature, the article argues for the significance of culture as a constitutive element of middle-class identities in England since 1800. It goes on to examine Bourdieu's ideas of 'objectivated', 'instutionalized' and 'incorporated' cultural capital, in the context of family, inheritance, education and the body. The article identifies changes in the historical forms which cultural capital has taken and emphasizes the importance of analysing family processes of intergenerational transmission.     

Exploring the contributions of human and social capital to productivity

In this article we investigate how human and social capital contribute to individual productivity. We study three firms that complete all their tasks as projects. The employees in all firms initiate and organise their projects. We collected archival data from the firms on performance, human capital, tenure, gender and their project activities. Social network data are generated from interviews and a survey. We find that social capital is the most important factor to determine productivity. We found mixed effects from human capital; only in one firm did human capital have a noticeable effect on productivity; tenure has no effects on productivity.     

Remembering the impossible possibility: Kierkegaard and human capital

Kierkegaard is classified as an existentialist. The irony of course is if he were authentically existential, then he would escape any categorisation. Rather than reading Kierkegaard as yet one more item on the shelves of the history of philosophy, why not read him as though he were relevant to our lives? Our argument is that modern capitalism has taken a subjective turn, and therefore reading Kierkegaard is as timely as ever. This isn’t a matter of constructing a politics out his texts but applying it to our lives. The modern subjective form of capital is human capital as was already diagnosed by Foucault in his prophetic lectures on bio-politics. At the heart of human capital is the ideology of the subject as a form of investment. We want to show how Kierkegaard’s own account of subjectivity resists this appropriation of the self by capital through a new ontology of subjectivity. At the heart of this ontology is a reversal of Aristotle. It is not the actual that determines the possible, but the possible the actual.     

Human capital,time use,and other family behavior

Human capital theory is recommended as a fertile theory to explain many aspects of family time use behavior. Some examples are given of the potential usefulness of the concepts of general and specific human capital. Investment of parental time in children is urged as a fruitful area of time use research.The criticisms of this article by my colleagues Rosemary Avery, Dean Lillard, and Dan Mont improved it materially. The views expressed are mine and not theirs, as they so ably pointed out, and I retain responsibility for them.Dr. Bryant's research interests include the consumption, investment and time use behavior of families and family members.     

Social capital of entrepreneurs in a developing country: The effect of gender on access to and requests for resources

This paper addresses gender differences in the social capital of entrepreneurs in a developing country. Social networks are often an important asset for accessing resources; however, they may also be a liability in developing countries, since entrepreneurs are often expected to support their contacts. Using a recent survey among urban and rural Ugandan entrepreneurs, we focus on the financial resources that entrepreneurs can obtain from their contacts on the one hand, and requests for financial support made to the entrepreneurs from these contacts on the other hand. Our results show that there are gender differences associated with access to, and requests for, financial resources.     

Economic achievement of immigrants in Japan: Examining the role of country-of-origin and host-country-specific human capital in an inflexible labor market

The economic integration of immigrants is a salient social issue in Japan. Although the US immigration literature has stressed the importance of host-country-specific human capital over country-of-origin human capital for immigrants, previous studies in Japan have shown mixed results about the effects of these two types of human capital on the economic integration of immigrants. The mixed results might be because previous studies focused on only specific immigrant groups (with regard to nationalities, cities, and visa status), human capital variables, and dimensions of economic achievements in the Japanese labor market. The segmented nature of the Japanese labor market structure and immigration policies create different pathways to “economic achievements” of immigrants depending on the dimension of “economic achievements” studied. By conducting a nationally representative social survey of Japanese immigrants, we examined the association between the two types of human capital (i.e., country-of-origin and host-country-specific) and the three indicators of labor market success: employment status and firm size, occupational status, and income. Our results indicate that host-country-specific human capital in the form of higher education and language proficiency is important for all three indicators of economic achievement in Japan, while country-of-origin human capital in the form of higher education and vocational skills is transferable to some extent. Our results suggest that the significance of human capital in immigrants' economic success is determined not only by the structure of the labor market but also by immigration policies.     

Open adoption,human capital formation,and uncertainty

A model of child human capital formation is outlined, which is used to assess the consequences of uncertainty experienced by adoptive parents related to practices of openness in adoption. The model predicts that uncertainty in the adoption environment may lead to lower levels of human capital investments in adopted children. Empirical evidence indicates that uncertainty represented by fear of not bonding with the adopted child is the most important predictor of resistance to open adoption. His research interests include labor market mobility and human capital formation in the household. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1989.     

Social capital and intimate partnership in later life: A gendered perspective on 60+ year-old Israelis

The gendered meaning of the repartnering process and the social capital mechanisms that facilitate it were examined by means of in-depth interviews with 32 Israelis 60 years and older. Two central themes emerged from the interviews. The first theme relates to the interviewees’ gendered perceptions of the change in their social capital between partnering relationships. The second theme concerns respondents’ recognition of the new partnership as social capital. These themes reflect the gendered dynamics in the use of social capital for repartnering in old age. The study also illustrates the complexity of ‘social capital’ as a concept and addresses its relevance for the elders’ well being.     

Gender role orientation and gaming behavior revisited: examining mediated and moderated effects

The article presents results of a study that examined the influence of gender role orientations on gaming motivations, game genre preferences, and different play styles. Applying social role theory, it was hypothesized that femininity and masculinity influence gender-typed motivations (social interaction, competition, and challenge) and preferences (role-playing and action games) as well as gender-typed behavior (cooperative play and competitive play). After collecting empirical data through an online survey, hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling. Moreover, moderating effects of sociodemographic characteristics (biological gender, age, and educational level) were examined. Findings provide evidence for the existence of gender-typed motives of play, genre preferences, and – mediated by motivations and preferences – gaming behavior. Group analyses support a biosocial model of gender-typed gaming behavior because gender-typing of motives, preferences, and play styles varies in strength and direction by biological gender, age, and educational level.     

The causal effect of social capital on income: A new analytic strategy

This study identifies three groups of job seekers in terms of the channels used to search for jobs: the formal channel involving only official procedures to obtain a job, the informal channel using only social contacts to obtain a job, and the joint channel leveraging both social contacts and official procedures. The analysis of a national sample survey of China shows that joint channel users, due to their relatively higher level of social capital, not only make more job search attempts but also obtain higher income than formal channel users. Meanwhile, joint channel users, because of their relative advantages in both human capital and social capital, not only make more job attempts but also obtain higher income than informal channel users. The two comparisons offer a new strategy to test the causal role social capital plays in labour market success, regardless of whether social capital is exogenous or endogenous to human capital.     

Gender, home and family in cultural capital theory

The paper argues that Bourdieu's stress on early familiarization for the highest value of cultural capital is closely linked to his idea, strongly emphasized in Distinction, about the role of family and domestic life for individual development and social positions. The role of women, as mothers and homemakers, is crucial in this process. Yet, Bourdieu defines social origin as deriving from the father. The centrality to Bourdieu's thinking of a resilient traditional pattern of masculine domination and feminine submission constitutive of the Western gender habitus explains both his stress on ‘normalcy’ for the production of legitimate dispositions, and his resistance to incorporating into his thinking the implications of recent transformations in home family living, which have destabilized the gender order. It is thus important to consider contemporary feminist analyses of the family and home life and their significance for a renewed theory of cultural capital. The paper considers two sets of literature. Firstly, it addresses the manners in which home and family are conceptualized in Bourdieu's key texts where these issues were prominent in the development of his thinking on cultural capital. The second set of literature includes texts by feminist academics in the fields of family, gender and the body, which analyse the destabilizing of the gender order and everyday family living in contemporary society. Two questions are addressed on the basis of these reflections: (1) Is cultural capital an individual or a household resource? (2) How does cultural capital relate to personal interdependencies at the level of family and households?     

Digital use as a mechanism to accrue economic capital: a Bourdieusian perspective

Using data from a large-scale Annual Social Survey of the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel, this study examines the “second-level” digital divide between the Jewish majority and Arab minority in Israeli society. The goals of this paper were to present the digital inequality between these two groups; to examine the connection between digital uses and economic capital and to characterize the link between the digital and social inequalities. Jews were found to have an advantage over Arabs in terms of Internet access and digital uses. Digital uses are an important resource that contributes to individuals’ economic rewards, beyond the impact of classic socio-demographic factors such as education and language proficiency. Therefore, digital technology can serve as a mobility channel for the Arab minority group to attain social and economic equality with the Jewish majority.