Katherine R Weisshaar
Biographic Data
| ID | 1699104 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Katherine R Weisshaar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Katherine R |
| FAMILY NAME | Weisshaar |
| SIGNATURE | WEISSHAAR K R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5029-9643 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 195 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
An imperfect match? gender and racial discrimination in hiring and applicant-job requirement matching as an unequal burden of proof
Discrimination in hiring screening decisions against Black men, Black women, and White women compared to White men has been well-documented in social science research, yet a fundamental aspect of the hiring process—the extent to which job applicants meet the job requirements—has not been clearly integrated into our understanding of hiring discrimination. In this paper, we develop an intersectional framework that conceptualizes applicant-job requi…
Survey Experiments in Sociology
Survey experiments are an underutilized but powerful tool for sociologists interested in studying causal research questions. Survey experiments can yield insights into the breadth of causal relationships, by studying treatment effects in population samples or across subgroups, and can yield a deeper understanding of causal processes that are not readily observed with other social science methodologies. In this article, we begin by considering the…
Hiring Discrimination Under Pressures to Diversify: Gender, Race, and Diversity Commodification across Job Transitions in Software Engineering
White, male-dominated professions in the United States are marked with substantial gender and racial inequality in career advancement, yet they often face pressures to increase diversity. In these contexts, are theories of employer biases based on gender and racial stereotypes sufficient to explain patterns of hiring discrimination during common career transitions in the external labor market? If not, how and why do discrimination patterns deviat…
Gender and Racial Discrimination in Hiring Before and During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Field Experiment of Accountants, 2018-2020
In this article, we ask whether macro-level changes during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic relate to changes in the levels of discrimination against women and Black job-seekers at the point of hire. We develop three main hypotheses: that discrimination against women and Black job-seekers increases due to a reduction in labor demand; that discrimination against women decreases due to the reduced supply of women employees and applicants; an…
Years of Sex and Gender in Social Forces
The 100-year anniversary of Social Forces offers an opportunity to reflect on change and stability of sociological scholarship as featured in the pages of one of the discipline’s oldest journals. Since the first issue in 1922, much has changed in the sociological study of sex and gender in Social Forces publications. In our review of a century of publications, we find that scholarship in Social Forces has increasingly paid attention to gender as …
Employment Lapses and Subsequent Hiring Disadvantages: An Experimental Approach Examining Types of Discrimination and Mechanisms
Employment interruption is a common experience in today's labor market, most frequently due to unemployment from job loss and temporary lapses to care for family or children. Although existing research shows that employment lapses cause disadvantages at the hiring interface compared to individuals with no employment disruptions, competing theories predict different mechanisms explaining these hiring penalties. In this study, the author uses an or…
Labor Force Participation Over the Life Course: The Long-Term Effects of Employment Trajectories on Wages and the Gendered Payoff to Employment
In this article, we consider how individuals’ long-term employment trajectories relate to wage inequality and the gender wage gap in the United States. Using more than 30 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 sample, we identify six employment trajectories for individuals from ages 22 to 50. We find that women across racial/ethnic groups and Black men are more likely than White and Hispanic men to have nonsteady employ…
Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment
Organizations implement formalized procedures to eliminate the biasing effects of gender and other characteristics on evaluations. Prior work shows managers play a key role, but researchers have been unable to observe the thought processes guiding managers' evaluations. This article takes a first step in examining managers' sensemaking as they interpret and evaluate employee behaviors. Our data include managers' written performance reviews and nu…
Are We Providing Enough to Those Who Have Too Little? Measuring Poverty Relief
This manuscript presents a new measure of safety net program effectiveness—a “poverty relief ratio”—that is based on the estimated relationship between market income and social transfers, and reports the amount of income support provided, relative to the amount required to provide for all low-income households’ basic needs. In an important advance over the standard poverty reduction rate measures, the poverty relief ratio preserves the rank order…
From Opt Out to Blocked Out: The Challenges for Labor Market Re-entry after Family-Related Employment Lapses
In today's labor market, the majority of individuals experience a lapse in employment at some point in their careers, most commonly due to unemployment from job loss or leaving work to care for family or children. Existing scholarship has studied how unemployment affects subsequent career outcomes, but the consequences of temporarily "opting out" of work to care for family are relatively unknown. In this article, I ask: how do "opt out" parents f…
Publish and Perish? An Assessment of Gender Gaps in Promotion to Tenure in Academia
In academia, there remains a gender gap in promotion to tenure, such that men are more likely to receive tenure than women. This paper tests three explanations of this gender gap in promotion: (1) contextual and organizational differences across departments; (2) performance/productivity differences by gender; and (3) gendered inequality in evaluation. To test these explanations, this project uses a novel dataset drawing from a sample of assistant…
Earnings Equality and Relationship Stability for Same-Sex and Heterosexual Couples
This paper examines a topic of continuing interest for demographers and sociologists of the family: which factors promote relationship stability among couples. Two competing theories have been highly debated to explain how relative earnings relate to relationship quality and stability. The neoclassical economic theory posits that specialization of home and work duties leads to stability because partners fill complementary roles. Gender scholars p…
From Opt Out to Blocked Out: The Challenges for Labor Market Re-entry after Family-Related Employment Lapses
In today's labor market, the majority of individuals experience a lapse in employment at some point in their careers, most commonly due to unemployment from job loss or leaving work to care for family or children. Existing scholarship has studied how unemployment affects subsequent career outcomes, but the consequences of temporarily "opting out" of work to care for family are relatively unknown. In this article, I ask: how do "opt out" parents f…
Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment
Organizations implement formalized procedures to eliminate the biasing effects of gender and other characteristics on evaluations. Prior work shows managers play a key role, but researchers have been unable to observe the thought processes guiding managers' evaluations. This article takes a first step in examining managers' sensemaking as they interpret and evaluate employee behaviors. Our data include managers' written performance reviews and nu…
Gender and Racial Discrimination in Hiring Before and During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Field Experiment of Accountants, 2018-2020
In this article, we ask whether macro-level changes during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic relate to changes in the levels of discrimination against women and Black job-seekers at the point of hire. We develop three main hypotheses: that discrimination against women and Black job-seekers increases due to a reduction in labor demand; that discrimination against women decreases due to the reduced supply of women employees and applicants; an…
Hiring Discrimination Under Pressures to Diversify: Gender, Race, and Diversity Commodification across Job Transitions in Software Engineering
White, male-dominated professions in the United States are marked with substantial gender and racial inequality in career advancement, yet they often face pressures to increase diversity. In these contexts, are theories of employer biases based on gender and racial stereotypes sufficient to explain patterns of hiring discrimination during common career transitions in the external labor market? If not, how and why do discrimination patterns deviat…
Labor Force Participation Over the Life Course: The Long-Term Effects of Employment Trajectories on Wages and the Gendered Payoff to Employment
In this article, we consider how individuals’ long-term employment trajectories relate to wage inequality and the gender wage gap in the United States. Using more than 30 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 sample, we identify six employment trajectories for individuals from ages 22 to 50. We find that women across racial/ethnic groups and Black men are more likely than White and Hispanic men to have nonsteady employ…
Employment Lapses and Subsequent Hiring Disadvantages: An Experimental Approach Examining Types of Discrimination and Mechanisms
Employment interruption is a common experience in today's labor market, most frequently due to unemployment from job loss and temporary lapses to care for family or children. Although existing research shows that employment lapses cause disadvantages at the hiring interface compared to individuals with no employment disruptions, competing theories predict different mechanisms explaining these hiring penalties. In this study, the author uses an or…
Survey Experiments in Sociology
Survey experiments are an underutilized but powerful tool for sociologists interested in studying causal research questions. Survey experiments can yield insights into the breadth of causal relationships, by studying treatment effects in population samples or across subgroups, and can yield a deeper understanding of causal processes that are not readily observed with other social science methodologies. In this article, we begin by considering the…
Years of Sex and Gender in Social Forces
The 100-year anniversary of Social Forces offers an opportunity to reflect on change and stability of sociological scholarship as featured in the pages of one of the discipline’s oldest journals. Since the first issue in 1922, much has changed in the sociological study of sex and gender in Social Forces publications. In our review of a century of publications, we find that scholarship in Social Forces has increasingly paid attention to gender as …
Earnings Equality and Relationship Stability for Same-Sex and Heterosexual Couples
This paper examines a topic of continuing interest for demographers and sociologists of the family: which factors promote relationship stability among couples. Two competing theories have been highly debated to explain how relative earnings relate to relationship quality and stability. The neoclassical economic theory posits that specialization of home and work duties leads to stability because partners fill complementary roles. Gender scholars p…
Publish and Perish? An Assessment of Gender Gaps in Promotion to Tenure in Academia
In academia, there remains a gender gap in promotion to tenure, such that men are more likely to receive tenure than women. This paper tests three explanations of this gender gap in promotion: (1) contextual and organizational differences across departments; (2) performance/productivity differences by gender; and (3) gendered inequality in evaluation. To test these explanations, this project uses a novel dataset drawing from a sample of assistant…
From Opt Out to Blocked Out: The Challenges for Labor Market Re-entry after Family-Related Employment Lapses
In today's labor market, the majority of individuals experience a lapse in employment at some point in their careers, most commonly due to unemployment from job loss or leaving work to care for family or children. Existing scholarship has studied how unemployment affects subsequent career outcomes, but the consequences of temporarily "opting out" of work to care for family are relatively unknown. In this article, I ask: how do "opt out" parents f…
Are We Providing Enough to Those Who Have Too Little? Measuring Poverty Relief
This manuscript presents a new measure of safety net program effectiveness—a “poverty relief ratio”—that is based on the estimated relationship between market income and social transfers, and reports the amount of income support provided, relative to the amount required to provide for all low-income households’ basic needs. In an important advance over the standard poverty reduction rate measures, the poverty relief ratio preserves the rank order…
Labor Force Participation Over the Life Course: The Long-Term Effects of Employment Trajectories on Wages and the Gendered Payoff to Employment
In this article, we consider how individuals’ long-term employment trajectories relate to wage inequality and the gender wage gap in the United States. Using more than 30 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 sample, we identify six employment trajectories for individuals from ages 22 to 50. We find that women across racial/ethnic groups and Black men are more likely than White and Hispanic men to have nonsteady employ…
Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment
Organizations implement formalized procedures to eliminate the biasing effects of gender and other characteristics on evaluations. Prior work shows managers play a key role, but researchers have been unable to observe the thought processes guiding managers' evaluations. This article takes a first step in examining managers' sensemaking as they interpret and evaluate employee behaviors. Our data include managers' written performance reviews and nu…
Employment Lapses and Subsequent Hiring Disadvantages: An Experimental Approach Examining Types of Discrimination and Mechanisms
Employment interruption is a common experience in today's labor market, most frequently due to unemployment from job loss and temporary lapses to care for family or children. Although existing research shows that employment lapses cause disadvantages at the hiring interface compared to individuals with no employment disruptions, competing theories predict different mechanisms explaining these hiring penalties. In this study, the author uses an or…
Gender and Racial Discrimination in Hiring Before and During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Field Experiment of Accountants, 2018-2020
In this article, we ask whether macro-level changes during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic relate to changes in the levels of discrimination against women and Black job-seekers at the point of hire. We develop three main hypotheses: that discrimination against women and Black job-seekers increases due to a reduction in labor demand; that discrimination against women decreases due to the reduced supply of women employees and applicants; an…
Years of Sex and Gender in Social Forces
The 100-year anniversary of Social Forces offers an opportunity to reflect on change and stability of sociological scholarship as featured in the pages of one of the discipline’s oldest journals. Since the first issue in 1922, much has changed in the sociological study of sex and gender in Social Forces publications. In our review of a century of publications, we find that scholarship in Social Forces has increasingly paid attention to gender as …
Hiring Discrimination Under Pressures to Diversify: Gender, Race, and Diversity Commodification across Job Transitions in Software Engineering
White, male-dominated professions in the United States are marked with substantial gender and racial inequality in career advancement, yet they often face pressures to increase diversity. In these contexts, are theories of employer biases based on gender and racial stereotypes sufficient to explain patterns of hiring discrimination during common career transitions in the external labor market? If not, how and why do discrimination patterns deviat…
Survey Experiments in Sociology
Survey experiments are an underutilized but powerful tool for sociologists interested in studying causal research questions. Survey experiments can yield insights into the breadth of causal relationships, by studying treatment effects in population samples or across subgroups, and can yield a deeper understanding of causal processes that are not readily observed with other social science methodologies. In this article, we begin by considering the…
An imperfect match? gender and racial discrimination in hiring and applicant-job requirement matching as an unequal burden of proof
Discrimination in hiring screening decisions against Black men, Black women, and White women compared to White men has been well-documented in social science research, yet a fundamental aspect of the hiring process—the extent to which job applicants meet the job requirements—has not been clearly integrated into our understanding of hiring discrimination. In this paper, we develop an intersectional framework that conceptualizes applicant-job requi…
Psychology (8 works) · Demographic economics (7 works) · Economics (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Political science (5 works) · Gender Diversity and Inequality (4 works) · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality (4 works) · Labour economics (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works)