Maria Charles
Biographic Data
| ID | 3630748 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maria Charles |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maria |
| FAMILY NAME | Charles |
| SIGNATURE | CHARLES M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3872-4093 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 985 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Is It Really a Paradox? A Mixed-Methods, Within-Country Analysis of the Gender Gap in STEM Education
It is well established that women’s representation in scientific and technical fields decreases with societal affluence, but the mechanisms underlying this so-called paradox remain contested. This study leverages distinctive features of the Israeli educational system to identify social psychological and organizational mechanisms driving contextual variability in the gendering of physics and computing subjects. Using in-depth interviews and origin…
Minding the gap(s): The uneven gendering of engineering and computing work across Europe
This study investigates variability across 31 European countries in the gender composition of engineering and computing (“tech”) occupations, and possible sociocultural drivers of this variability. As previously documented for other STEM domains and geographies, the largest tech gender gaps are in the most affluent societies of Europe (which are also most postmaterialist and gender-liberal culturally). Multilevel regression models explore key att…
The gendering of tech selves: Aspirations for computing jobs among Jewish and Arab/Palestinian adolescents in Israel
This study uses original survey data to compare aspirations for computing jobs (“tech aspirations”) between students in Arabic- and Hebrew-language school sectors in Israel. Analogous to “paradoxical” patterns previously documented in cross-national studies, results show a smaller gender gap in tech aspirations in schools serving the more socioeconomically precarious Arab/Palestinian population. The strongest predictor of tech aspirations is stud…
Complicating Patriarchy: Gender Beliefs of Muslim Facebook Users in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia
Western stereotypes often characterize gender relations in Muslim-majority societies as uniformly traditional and patriarchal. Underlying this imagery is a unidimensional understanding of gender ideology as moving along a single traditional-to-egalitarian continuum. In this study, we interrogate these assumptions by exploring variability across and within Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian (MENASA) societies in beliefs related to two …
Context Matters: Differential Gendering of Physics in Arabic-speaking, Hebrew-speaking, and Single-Sex State Schools in Israel
Traditional Asians? Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Policy Attitudes in the United States
Rujun Yang a , Maria Charles b , Traditional Asians? Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Policy Attitudes in the United States, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 7, No. 2, Asian Americans and the Immigrant Integration Agenda (April 2021), pp. 130-153
Covid-19: An Appeal for an Intersectoral Approach to Tackle With the Emergency
The knowledge of disease determinants is a pre-requisite for disease prevention. Infectious diseases determinants can be classified in three ways, as: primary or secondary; intrinsic or extrinsic; and associated with host, agent, or environment. In the specific case of COVID-19 several of these determinants are currently unknown leading to difficulties in public health approach to this disease. In this paper, we attempt to address several of the …
Trends in Support for Stay-at-Home Mothering
This trend piece is an exploration of the evolution of attitudes on the division of domestic labor since the turn of the twenty-first century
Gender Attitudes in Africa: Liberal Egalitarianism Across 34 Countries
This study provides a first descriptive mapping of support for women’s equal rights in 34 African countries and assesses diverse theoretical explanations for variability in this support. Contrary to stereotypes of a homogeneously tradition-bound continent, African citizens report high levels of agreement with gender equality that are more easily understood with reference to global processes of ideational diffusion than to country-level difference…
Egalitarianism and Gender Inequality
This chapter discusses the quieter anti-egalitarian forces currently playing out in the domain of gender stratification. The clearest evidence of resistance to egalitarian pressures emerges in comparing the rate of desegregative change with corresponding rates of change elsewhere in the gender stratification system. It argues that the empirical puzzles have emerged in the literature because stratification scholars tend to treat sex segregation in…
Segregation, Stereotypes, and STEM
Scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) occupations are strongholds of gender segregation in the contemporary United States. While many Americans regard this segregation as natural and inevitable, closer examination reveals a great deal of variability in the gendering of STEM fields across time, space, and demographic groups. This article assesses how different theoretical accounts accord with the available evidence on the gen…
Division of Labor, Gender
The gendered division of labor refers to the performance of different work tasks by men and women. This division has been the focus of much attention by scholars, policymakers, and feminist activists because women often reap lesser material and nonmaterial rewards for their work than do men and because gender differentiation may limit individual freedom, reinforce stereotypes, and generate powerful self‐fulfilling prophesies about gender differen…
Venus, Mars, and Math: Gender, Societal Affluence, and Eighth Graders' Aspirations for STEM
The author explores how the gender gap in aspirations for scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) work changes with societal affluence. Over-time data on cohorts of eighth graders in 32 countries reveal that aspirations for mathematically related work become more gender differentiated as societal affluence grows. This relationship holds controlling for students' social class backgrounds, mathematical achievement, and affinity …
Gender Segregation in Higher Education
During the second half of the twentieth century, systems of higher education expanded and democratized around the world. Women's participation increased so dramatically that their numbers now surpass men's in many industrialized countries. But gender equalization has not occurred uniformly. Sex segregation of majors and degree programs is a striking feature of modern educational systems and a key reason for the ongoing social and economic inequal…
Is There a Caring Class? Intergenerational Transmission of Care Work
Most research on intergenerational social reproduction has been concerned with upward and downward movements across rank-ordered, "big-class" categories or along continuous gradients of status, income, or skill. An exception is the more nominal conceptualization of the social structure offered in recent research that focuses on qualitative differences in life conditions across occupational "microclasses. " The present analysis broadens this nomin…
Who likes math where? Gender differences in eighth-graders’ attitudes around the world
Some of the most male-dominated science, technology, engineering and mathematics occupations and degree programmes are found in the world’s most affluent societies. This article assesses whether gender gaps in attitudes follow similarly surprising patterns. Multivariate analysis of eighth-graders’ affinity for mathematics and aspirations for mathematically related jobs in 53 countries shows that the attitudinal gender gap is indeed larger in affl…
Sex Typing
The local Joneses: Household consumption and income inequality in large metropolitan areas
Cecilia L. Ridgeway: Framed by Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World
The 20th century was marked by the rise and worldwide diffusion of liberal egalitarian social movements, cultural ideals, and bureaucratic forms. Principles of equal opportunity and non-discrimination today garner near-universal affirmation in national and international forums, and women’s free access to labour markets, educational systems, and polities is commonly regarded as a signifier of modernity and social progress. Much progress towards ge…
Happy Families are Adaptable Families
of sociology and read would inquire only into these interworkings [Wechselwirkun gen], these kinds and forms of social interac tion [Vergesellschaftung] (p. 23), the gain is less convincing. Wolff's version?it must exclusively investigate these interactions, these kinds and forms of sociation?has the advantage of maintaining the precision of Simmel's terminology and the logical relationship between interaction and association. There is, of course…
A World of Difference: International Trends in Women's Economic Status
Around the globe and starting in the affluent West, women have made major, even revolutionary, strides toward equality with men. However, while access to major social institutions has equalized dramatically, expanded participation in labor markets and educational systems often comes in the form of gender-differentiated roles within these institutions. This article reviews international trends on different indicators of women's economic status and…
Indulging Our Gendered Selves? Sex Segregation by Field of Study in 44 Countries
Data from 44 societies are used to explore sex segregation by field of study. Contrary to accounts linking socioeconomic modernization to a "degendering" of public-sphere institutions, sex typing of curricular fields is stronger in more economically developed contexts. The authors argue that two cultural forces combine in advanced industrial societies to create a new sort of sex segregation regime. The first is gender-essentialist ideology, which…
Culture and Inequality: Identity, Ideology, and Difference in “Postascriptive Society”
How have conceptualizations of “culture” been incorporated into sociological studies of class, racial/ethnic, and gender inequality? This article first reviews the development of American scholarship on social inequalities during the past half century and the role of cultural analysis in this development. It goes on to consider culture-related responses to three central questions in the subdiscipline and closes with an examination of currently co…
National Skill Regimes, Postindustrialism, and Sex Segregation
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2005
Special Reviewers
Indulging Our Gendered Selves? Sex Segregation by Field of Study in 44 Countries
Data from 44 societies are used to explore sex segregation by field of study. Contrary to accounts linking socioeconomic modernization to a "degendering" of public-sphere institutions, sex typing of curricular fields is stronger in more economically developed contexts. The authors argue that two cultural forces combine in advanced industrial societies to create a new sort of sex segregation regime. The first is gender-essentialist ideology, which…
Equal but Separate? A Cross-National Study of Sex Segregation in Higher Education
The contours and correlates of sex segregation in higher education are explored using data from twelve advanced industrialized countries. Tertiary sex segregation is examined across two dimensions: field of study (horizontal segregation) and tertiary level (vertical segregation). The authors argue that the different aspects of female status in higher education (e.g., overall enrollments, representation at the postgraduate level, and representatio…
A World of Difference: International Trends in Women's Economic Status
Around the globe and starting in the affluent West, women have made major, even revolutionary, strides toward equality with men. However, while access to major social institutions has equalized dramatically, expanded participation in labor markets and educational systems often comes in the form of gender-differentiated roles within these institutions. This article reviews international trends on different indicators of women's economic status and…
Cross-National Variation in Occupational Sex Segregation
I examine the relationship between the occupational distributions of men and women in 25 industrial countries and selected social, economic, and cultural factors. Recent research suggests counterintuitive international patterns of occupational sex segregation: low levels of segregation in some traditional countries like Japan and Italy, and high levels in the progressive countries of Scandinavia. I argue that the same economic structures that are…
Models for Describing the Underlying Structure of Sex Segregation
This article introduces a structural approach to analyzing sex segregation data that rests on margin-free measures of the underlying association in sex-by-occupation arrays. The starting point for the analyses is a log-multiplicative model that is formally consistent with the conventional practice of summarizing cross-national variability in a single parameter pertaining to the overall strength of sex segregation. Under this baseline specificatio…
Segregation, Stereotypes, and STEM
Scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) occupations are strongholds of gender segregation in the contemporary United States. While many Americans regard this segregation as natural and inevitable, closer examination reveals a great deal of variability in the gendering of STEM fields across time, space, and demographic groups. This article assesses how different theoretical accounts accord with the available evidence on the gen…
Deciphering Sex Segregation: Vertical and Horizontal Inequalities in Ten National Labor Markets
Scholars and policy-makers increasingly treat occupational sex segregation as a generic indicator of female economic disadvantage. This view is difficult to reconcile with evidence that levels of sex segregation are lower in reputably 'gender-traditional' countries such as Italy, Japan, and Portugal than in 'progressive' Sweden and the United States. Understanding such seemingly anomalous patterns requires a two-dimensional conceptualization of o…
Venus, Mars, and Math: Gender, Societal Affluence, and Eighth Graders' Aspirations for STEM
The author explores how the gender gap in aspirations for scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) work changes with societal affluence. Over-time data on cohorts of eighth graders in 32 countries reveal that aspirations for mathematically related work become more gender differentiated as societal affluence grows. This relationship holds controlling for students' social class backgrounds, mathematical achievement, and affinity …
National Skill Regimes, Postindustrialism, and Sex Segregation
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2005
The Context of Women's Market Careers: A Cross-National Study
The authors compare determinants of labor force participation and occupational sex typing over a 20-year period for matched samples of American and Swiss women. Results indicate important cross-national differences in processes governing women's market careers. These are in line with the authors' predictions regarding mediating effects of specific cultural, organizational, and institutional factors that differentiate the two countries. Female lab…
Organizational and Institutional Factors in the Process of Gender Stratification: Comparing Social Arrangements in Six European Countries
(1995). Organizational and Institutional Factors in the Process of Gender Stratification: Comparing Social Arrangements in Six European Countries. International Journal of Sociology: Vol. 25, Work and Welfare in a Changing Europe Part III: European Labor Markets in a Gender Perspective, pp. 66-95
The past, present, and future of sex segregation methodoloqy
We review the logic underlying margin-free analyses of sex segregation arrays. In the course of our review, we show that the Karmel-MacLachlan decomposition does not live up to its margin-free billing, as the index upon which it rests, Ip, is itself margin-sensitive. Moreover, because the implicit individualism of D is necessarily inconsistent with margin-free analysis, the field would do well to abandon not merely the Karmel-MacLachlan decomposi…
Who likes math where? Gender differences in eighth-graders’ attitudes around the world
Some of the most male-dominated science, technology, engineering and mathematics occupations and degree programmes are found in the world’s most affluent societies. This article assesses whether gender gaps in attitudes follow similarly surprising patterns. Multivariate analysis of eighth-graders’ affinity for mathematics and aspirations for mathematically related jobs in 53 countries shows that the attitudinal gender gap is indeed larger in affl…
Culture and Inequality: Identity, Ideology, and Difference in “Postascriptive Society”
How have conceptualizations of “culture” been incorporated into sociological studies of class, racial/ethnic, and gender inequality? This article first reviews the development of American scholarship on social inequalities during the past half century and the role of cultural analysis in this development. It goes on to consider culture-related responses to three central questions in the subdiscipline and closes with an examination of currently co…
The local Joneses: Household consumption and income inequality in large metropolitan areas
Divisions of labour. Social groups and occupational allocation
This paper explores the multidimensional contours of occupational segregation and the causal processes that generate occupational distributions. Previous research in this field has focused on a single classificatory dimensions (e.g. gender or race or citizenship status) or has examined segregation across a limited subset of occupations. Little is therefore known about how distributional patterns differ across cross-classified social groups, consi…
Complicating Patriarchy: Gender Beliefs of Muslim Facebook Users in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia
Western stereotypes often characterize gender relations in Muslim-majority societies as uniformly traditional and patriarchal. Underlying this imagery is a unidimensional understanding of gender ideology as moving along a single traditional-to-egalitarian continuum. In this study, we interrogate these assumptions by exploring variability across and within Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian (MENASA) societies in beliefs related to two …
The gendering of tech selves: Aspirations for computing jobs among Jewish and Arab/Palestinian adolescents in Israel
This study uses original survey data to compare aspirations for computing jobs (“tech aspirations”) between students in Arabic- and Hebrew-language school sectors in Israel. Analogous to “paradoxical” patterns previously documented in cross-national studies, results show a smaller gender gap in tech aspirations in schools serving the more socioeconomically precarious Arab/Palestinian population. The strongest predictor of tech aspirations is stud…
Context Matters: Differential Gendering of Physics in Arabic-speaking, Hebrew-speaking, and Single-Sex State Schools in Israel
Traditional Asians? Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Policy Attitudes in the United States
Rujun Yang a , Maria Charles b , Traditional Asians? Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Policy Attitudes in the United States, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 7, No. 2, Asian Americans and the Immigrant Integration Agenda (April 2021), pp. 130-153
Is It Really a Paradox? A Mixed-Methods, Within-Country Analysis of the Gender Gap in STEM Education
It is well established that women’s representation in scientific and technical fields decreases with societal affluence, but the mechanisms underlying this so-called paradox remain contested. This study leverages distinctive features of the Israeli educational system to identify social psychological and organizational mechanisms driving contextual variability in the gendering of physics and computing subjects. Using in-depth interviews and origin…
Is There a Caring Class? Intergenerational Transmission of Care Work
Most research on intergenerational social reproduction has been concerned with upward and downward movements across rank-ordered, "big-class" categories or along continuous gradients of status, income, or skill. An exception is the more nominal conceptualization of the social structure offered in recent research that focuses on qualitative differences in life conditions across occupational "microclasses. " The present analysis broadens this nomin…
Tracking pupil progress from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2: How much do the ‘route’ taken and the primary school attended matter
The analysis considers two key questions relating to pupil progress. First, whether the ‘route’ or pattern of ‘steps’ a pupil takes between Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 matters in terms of their performance in the Key Stage 2 assessments. Secondly, whether such progress is influenced by the primary school a pupil attends. The research draws on a unique data‐set with data on the performance of over 3000 pupils in over 300 primary schools at Key Sta…
Women and Men at Work
Gender, Culture and the Division of Household Labor: A Replication of U.S. Studies for the Case of Switzerland
In this study, the empirical validity of three models of domestic task-sharing was evaluated for a sample of young Swiss couples. Variables measuring spouses’ relative social and economic resources were found to have little impact on the division of labor, and sex role traditionality was found to have only a moderate effect. The variable with the strongest independent impact on Swiss husbands’ domestic participation was the presence of children. …
Cross-National Variation in Occupational Sex Segregation
I examine the relationship between the occupational distributions of men and women in 25 industrial countries and selected social, economic, and cultural factors. Recent research suggests counterintuitive international patterns of occupational sex segregation: low levels of segregation in some traditional countries like Japan and Italy, and high levels in the progressive countries of Scandinavia. I argue that the same economic structures that are…
Organizational and Institutional Factors in the Process of Gender Stratification: Comparing Social Arrangements in Six European Countries
(1995). Organizational and Institutional Factors in the Process of Gender Stratification: Comparing Social Arrangements in Six European Countries. International Journal of Sociology: Vol. 25, Work and Welfare in a Changing Europe Part III: European Labor Markets in a Gender Perspective, pp. 66-95
Models for Describing the Underlying Structure of Sex Segregation
This article introduces a structural approach to analyzing sex segregation data that rests on margin-free measures of the underlying association in sex-by-occupation arrays. The starting point for the analyses is a log-multiplicative model that is formally consistent with the conventional practice of summarizing cross-national variability in a single parameter pertaining to the overall strength of sex segregation. Under this baseline specificatio…
Women and Men at Work
The past, present, and future of sex segregation methodoloqy
We review the logic underlying margin-free analyses of sex segregation arrays. In the course of our review, we show that the Karmel-MacLachlan decomposition does not live up to its margin-free billing, as the index upon which it rests, Ip, is itself margin-sensitive. Moreover, because the implicit individualism of D is necessarily inconsistent with margin-free analysis, the field would do well to abandon not merely the Karmel-MacLachlan decomposi…
The Future of Female-Dominated Occupations
Divisions of labour. Social groups and occupational allocation
This paper explores the multidimensional contours of occupational segregation and the causal processes that generate occupational distributions. Previous research in this field has focused on a single classificatory dimensions (e.g. gender or race or citizenship status) or has examined segregation across a limited subset of occupations. Little is therefore known about how distributional patterns differ across cross-classified social groups, consi…
The Context of Women's Market Careers: A Cross-National Study
The authors compare determinants of labor force participation and occupational sex typing over a 20-year period for matched samples of American and Swiss women. Results indicate important cross-national differences in processes governing women's market careers. These are in line with the authors' predictions regarding mediating effects of specific cultural, organizational, and institutional factors that differentiate the two countries. Female lab…
Equal but Separate? A Cross-National Study of Sex Segregation in Higher Education
The contours and correlates of sex segregation in higher education are explored using data from twelve advanced industrialized countries. Tertiary sex segregation is examined across two dimensions: field of study (horizontal segregation) and tertiary level (vertical segregation). The authors argue that the different aspects of female status in higher education (e.g., overall enrollments, representation at the postgraduate level, and representatio…
Deciphering Sex Segregation: Vertical and Horizontal Inequalities in Ten National Labor Markets
Scholars and policy-makers increasingly treat occupational sex segregation as a generic indicator of female economic disadvantage. This view is difficult to reconcile with evidence that levels of sex segregation are lower in reputably 'gender-traditional' countries such as Italy, Japan, and Portugal than in 'progressive' Sweden and the United States. Understanding such seemingly anomalous patterns requires a two-dimensional conceptualization of o…
Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men
The last half-century has witnessed dramatic declines in gender inequality, evidenced by the rise of egalitarian views on gender roles and the narrowing of long-standing gender gaps in university attendance and labor force participation. This development, while spectacular, has been coupled with similarly impressive forms of resistance to equalization, most notably the continuing tendency for women to crowd into female “occupational ghettos.” Thi…
Occupational Ghettos
Chapter Six. Gender and Age in the Japanese Labor Market, 1950 –1995
Tracking pupil progress from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2: How much do the ‘route’ taken and the primary school attended matter
The analysis considers two key questions relating to pupil progress. First, whether the ‘route’ or pattern of ‘steps’ a pupil takes between Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 matters in terms of their performance in the Key Stage 2 assessments. Secondly, whether such progress is influenced by the primary school a pupil attends. The research draws on a unique data‐set with data on the performance of over 3000 pupils in over 300 primary schools at Key Sta…
National Skill Regimes, Postindustrialism, and Sex Segregation
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2005
Special Reviewers
Culture and Inequality: Identity, Ideology, and Difference in “Postascriptive Society”
How have conceptualizations of “culture” been incorporated into sociological studies of class, racial/ethnic, and gender inequality? This article first reviews the development of American scholarship on social inequalities during the past half century and the role of cultural analysis in this development. It goes on to consider culture-related responses to three central questions in the subdiscipline and closes with an examination of currently co…
Indulging Our Gendered Selves? Sex Segregation by Field of Study in 44 Countries
Data from 44 societies are used to explore sex segregation by field of study. Contrary to accounts linking socioeconomic modernization to a "degendering" of public-sphere institutions, sex typing of curricular fields is stronger in more economically developed contexts. The authors argue that two cultural forces combine in advanced industrial societies to create a new sort of sex segregation regime. The first is gender-essentialist ideology, which…
Happy Families are Adaptable Families
of sociology and read would inquire only into these interworkings [Wechselwirkun gen], these kinds and forms of social interac tion [Vergesellschaftung] (p. 23), the gain is less convincing. Wolff's version?it must exclusively investigate these interactions, these kinds and forms of sociation?has the advantage of maintaining the precision of Simmel's terminology and the logical relationship between interaction and association. There is, of course…
A World of Difference: International Trends in Women's Economic Status
Around the globe and starting in the affluent West, women have made major, even revolutionary, strides toward equality with men. However, while access to major social institutions has equalized dramatically, expanded participation in labor markets and educational systems often comes in the form of gender-differentiated roles within these institutions. This article reviews international trends on different indicators of women's economic status and…
Sex Typing
The local Joneses: Household consumption and income inequality in large metropolitan areas
Cecilia L. Ridgeway: Framed by Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World
The 20th century was marked by the rise and worldwide diffusion of liberal egalitarian social movements, cultural ideals, and bureaucratic forms. Principles of equal opportunity and non-discrimination today garner near-universal affirmation in national and international forums, and women’s free access to labour markets, educational systems, and polities is commonly regarded as a signifier of modernity and social progress. Much progress towards ge…
Who likes math where? Gender differences in eighth-graders’ attitudes around the world
Some of the most male-dominated science, technology, engineering and mathematics occupations and degree programmes are found in the world’s most affluent societies. This article assesses whether gender gaps in attitudes follow similarly surprising patterns. Multivariate analysis of eighth-graders’ affinity for mathematics and aspirations for mathematically related jobs in 53 countries shows that the attitudinal gender gap is indeed larger in affl…
Sociology (28 works) · Political science (24 works) · Gender Studies (21 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Economics (17 works) · Demographic economics (15 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Demography (8 works)