The present research demonstrates a novel institutional-level contributor--that is, gendered wording used in job recruitment materials--that serves to perpetuate the status quo, keeping women underrepresented in traditionally male-dominated occupations. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the literature on barriers to women’s inclusion in traditionally male-dominated fields. Chapter 2 demonstrates the existence of subtle but systematic wording differences within a randomly sampled set of job advertisements. Results indicated that job advertisements for male-dominated areas employed greater "masculine" (e.g., challenge, analyze, lead) than “feminine” wording (e.g., support, understand, interpersonal; Studies 1 and 2). In Chapter 3, I tested the consequences of these wording differences across four experimental studies. When job ads were constructed to include more masculine than feminine wording, people perceived fewer women within these occupations (Study 3) and, importantly, women found these jobs less appealing (Studies 4-6). Men showed the opposite pattern, preferring jobs with masculinely-worded ads to the femininely-worded jobs (Study 4-5). Results confirmed that perceptions of belongingness (but not perceived skills) mediated the effect of gendered wording on job appeal (Studies 4 and 6). The system-justifying function of gendered wording and implications for gender parity and theoretical models of inequality are discussed in Chapter 4.

Brazil is a country that is considered an anomaly among many economist and political scientist because of its unique social, political and economic structure. Due to this fact, many of the rules that apply when analyzing developing countries do not necessarily apply to Brazil. For this reason, in the following chapters this paper will seek to dissect several distinctive issues that affect poverty and inequality in Brazil. Particularly, I have gathered information from various academic and data sources to provide a comprehensive picture of the true socio-economic situation in Brazil.

In this thesis I focus on segregation between households giving attention to the roles that family type, economic inequality, and race can play in promoting and maintaining these patterns. I first consider three lines of urban ecological theory that have been offered to help explain patterns of segregation. One line of theory emphasizes the role of variation in preferences and needs. The second emphasizes urban structure, market dynamics, and economic inequality, while the third emphasizes the role of race. Research examining the role of consumer preferences in the neighborhood and housing choices of Americans has documented the salience of preferences regarding housing characteristics, neighborhood income, distance to employment, and neighborhood racial composition. Related research shows that these preferences vary with social characteristics such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender, stage in the life cycle, and household type. I review these literatures and link them with urban ecological theory and the related literatures on social area analysis and factorial ecology. These theories argue that households within a city are likely to cluster together in space based on mutually shared characteristics and preferences. To explore these theories, I draw oncensus data for Houston, Texas and use the xPx measure to document patterns of contact between households based on family type, poverty status, and race. I also decompose the effects that each of these variables can have separately and in combination with each other. Following this analysis, I estimate a spatial attainment model that predicts characteristics of neighborhoods that individuals in each of the race, poverty and family type groups would live in. Finally, I use computer simulation methods to explore how micro-level dynamics of housing markets can produce patterns of segregation between groups who are similar in their location preferences. Specifically, I explore how the factors of area stratification and group income inequality can lead to segregation between groups who hold similar location preferences.

Prior research has repeatedly documented the existence of gender inequality, discrimination, and harassment in the legal practice, an occupation that remains maledominated in terms of both numbers and organizational culture. Despite the availability of some legal remedies, women attorneys rarely sue their employers, and often do not challenge discriminatory behavior. In this dissertation, I explore this seemingly contradictory situation, where lawyers fail to employ the legal system on their own behalf, and I seek to determine whether the law can in fact be mobilized to challenge and perhaps change gender relations in the legal practice. Through ethnographic field research and content analysis of an Internet community, my research examines possible methods by which the law can serve as a tool to challenge gender discrimination. Further, I assess the manner in which the Internet community itself can serve as a vehicle for challenging gender inequality. In particular, I first explore the role formal litigation might play in promoting change for women attorneys, determining that attorneys in the Internet community are hesitant to employ litigation to challenge gender discrimination. This reluctance appears to result in large part from attorneys’ familiarity with the daunting task of establishing a discrimination case in the judicial system, as well as from a fear that the pursuit of litigation could inflict damage upon their legal careers. I then consider whether the law can serve as a useful tool to challenge inequality when legal discourse is employed within the Internet community to invoke a legal right to a discrimination-free workplace. I find that attorneys, despite their legal training, call upon both formal and informal notions of discrimination when confronted with circumstances colored with inequity. The Internet community itself provides a protected, semianonymous forum in which to engage in such discourse, thereby subverting many of the barriers that currently exist to challenging gender inequality in the legal practice. Further, the community serves as a resource to bring public attention to bear upon law firms, creating external pressures which encourage a reevaluation of both lay and legal understandings of prohibited gender discrimination.

The present research demonstrates a novel institutional-level contributor--that is, gendered wording used in job recruitment materials--that serves to perpetuate the status quo, keeping women underrepresented in traditionally male-dominated occupations. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the literature on barriers to women’s inclusion in traditionally male-dominated fields. Chapter 2 demonstrates the existence of subtle but systematic wording differences within a randomly sampled set of job advertisements. Results indicated that job advertisements for male-dominated areas employed greater "masculine" (e.g., challenge, analyze, lead) than “feminine” wording (e.g., support, understand, interpersonal; Studies 1 and 2). In Chapter 3, I tested the consequences of these wording differences across four experimental studies. When job ads were constructed to include more masculine than feminine wording, people perceived fewer women within these occupations (Study 3) and, importantly, women found these jobs less appealing (Studies 4-6). Men showed the opposite pattern, preferring jobs with masculinely-worded ads to the femininely-worded jobs (Study 4-5). Results confirmed that perceptions of belongingness (but not perceived skills) mediated the effect of gendered wording on job appeal (Studies 4 and 6). The system-justifying function of gendered wording and implications for gender parity and theoretical models of inequality are discussed in Chapter 4.

This dissertation explores the role of status and status hierarchies in organizations, with considerable attention devoted to status-based health disparities. Manuscript 1 extends the current work stress literature by proposing a dynamic model relating individual-level socio-economic status (SES) to workplace stressors, psychological resources, and health. The model is tested using three-wave longitudinal data gathered across four years from employed Canadians. The results show an escalating relationship between personal control and work stressors, which indirectly links SES to physical health outcomes. The second study of the dissertation elaborates on the definition of status, acknowledging and embracing its relational nature. In doing so, Manuscript 2 advances Manuscript 1 in numerous ways: (1) it conceptualizes status at the team-level of analysis by introducing the construct of status inequality, or the degree to which status is dispersed within teams; (2) it shifts focus from macro indicators of SES to organizational indicators of status within small, face-to-face teams, asking whether status in these teams influences health; (3) it explores performance-related outcomes in addition to health outcomes at both the individual- and team-level of analysis. Archival data from National Basketball Association players and teams were obtained to test the hypotheses set forth in Manuscript 2. The results of the study suggest that both status and status inequality (and their interaction) are related to the focal individual- and team-level outcomes. The final chapter comprising this dissertation resides largely at the team-level of analysis. Manuscript 3 is a conceptual exploration into the mechanisms that relate status inequality to team-level health and performance, proposing that status inequality influences social cognition, from which emerges a team’s social structure. Furthermore, it places boundary conditions on the effects of status inequality by arguing that shared cultural values will determine how status inequality is perceived and enacted. The dissertation closes with a general discussion of the studies and recommendations for future research. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2008-11-25 11:12:46.526

Since the commencement of welfare state restructuring in the mid 1990’s under the Harris government in Ontario, significant cuts to social assistance, or what symbolically became ‘Ontario Works’, have fundamentally altered how assistance is managed and delivered. Accompanying these financial reforms was the increased surveillance of individuals and families receiving social assistance in the province of Ontario. The central focus of this project examines the technological, task force-oriented and community surveillance practices administered by Ontario Works. Based on primary research of policy documents, legislation, regulations and directives, the thesis argues that through the multitude of surveillance technologies, Ontario Works has made living on social assistance increasingly more demoralizing, in addition to the added difficulty of obtaining welfare benefits. Finally, since an overwhelming majority of recipients are single mothers, the thesis addresses the substantial gender and class dimensions attached to Ontario Works’ surveillance practices and further questions the neoliberal policies such as the ‘war on fraud’ which justified the increased surveillance of poor mothers. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2009-05-29 16:36:00.676

Though there has been substantial research on poverty and inequality in Canada, the issue of Aboriginal poverty and inequality has not yet been examined in a systematic manner. The issue has been discussed, in some cases, as a part of the overall poverty profile, and mostly analysed in a cross-sectional manner. A complete and methodical study of Aboriginal poverty and inequality that allows behaviour of poverty and inequality to be analysed over time remains to be initiated. In order to get a comprehensive comparative picture of Aboriginal income poverty and inequality in Canada, the research measures off-reserve Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal income poverty and inequality for the period 1996-2007 and compares the results for off-reserve Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal population groups. For measurement purposes Statistics Canada’s low income cut-offs are considered as poverty lines. Several commonly known along with some axiomatically correct poverty indices such as Headcount Ratio, Income Gap Ratio, Poverty Gap Index, Foster-Greer-Thorbecke Index, Sen Index and some modifications of the Sen Index such as the Sen-Shorrocks-Thon (SSTO) Index are used. The Gini coefficient is used as the measure of inequality. Both pre-tax and post-tax incomes are considered. Though a substantial decline in off-reserve Aboriginal poverty is recorded by most of the poverty indices by early 2000s, off-reserve Aboriginal poverty remains higher than non-Aboriginal poverty. After the decline, these off-reserve Aboriginal poverty indices remain stable and show some decline from mid-2000s onwards. Income inequality among the non-Aboriginal population remains stable throughout the period whereas off-reserve Aboriginal income inequality shows a slightly increasing trend in the 2000s. According to the breakdown of the SSTO Index, the decline in off-reserve Aboriginal poverty is mainly due to decline in the headcount ratio.

In this paper, I use data from the United States Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences database and data compiled from the Internal Revenue Service to investigate how income inequality impacts the academic achievement of students. More specifically, I examine whether or not high levels of income inequality adversely impact the test scores of students in grades 4 and 8. I find a significant and negative relationship between income inequality, when measured as the share of income held by the top 10 percent, and the mathematics test scores of students in fourth and eighth grade. This is consistent with previous literature. Conversely, when examining this relationship using other measures of income inequality, such as the Gini Coefficient, results are inconclusive. Overall, my results suggest that students who reside in states with higher levels of income inequality also experience lower levels of academic achievement.

This thesis looks at the empirical implementation of human capital theory in the form of the estimation of earnings functions for married males and females. Its main purpose is to investigate how any biases in estimation may affect males and females to different extents and thus lead to an inaccurate comparison between the two groups. It concentrates on the two productivity traits of education and experience. As such, it does not intend to provide a comprehensive account of male-female wage differentials, but looks instead at how any asymmetry of bias may feed through to measures of discrimination. This asymmetry in bias will, if uncorrected, give a false comparison of the two different groups' relative returns to schooling and experience. It is, as such, a cautionary tale which argues for the careful implementation of econometric techniques to earnings functions. A failure to correct for any asymmetry is likely to lead to inappropriate policy recommendations and may lead to inefficiency of policy in three potential and mutually exclusive ways. First, biases may artificially create differences between males and females where there are none, thus leading to the introduction of policy where inaction may be preferable. Second, biases may mask underlying differences, causing inappropriate inaction by government where action would indeed be merited. Third, biases may cause inaccurate measures of the relative returns to both education and experience and thus indicate falsely where it would be the most effective to target policy to reduce discrimination. This thesis has shown that, in order to suggest appropriate policy measures, so as to correctly introduce, implement and target policy, there is a need to apply appropriate econometric techniques and correct for biases.