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This article investigates whether changes in women’s and men’s contributions to household income in Germany and Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic are associated with changes in unpaid work. The current health crisis represents a unique opportunity to explore these topics, because the restrictive measures imposed during the lockdown are likely to have generated an unexpected shock to both domestic work and individual ability to contribute to household income. Using data from two novel datasets collected in Germany and Italy during the pandemic, this article shows that changes to both contribution to household income and unpaid activities during the crisis have been gendered, affecting women more negatively than men. In addition, we suggest that economic disturbances during the pandemic are associated with gendered changes in unpaid work that seem to be driven by changes in bargaining power in both countries. Our results also show some support for enhanced traditionalization of domestic life among German couples during the crisis, as predicted by gender display theories, albeit only regarding childcare. published

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-soc-10.1177_00380385221122400 for Variations of Gender Gaps in the Labour Market Outcomes of Graduates across Fields of Study: A (Combined) Test of Two Theories by Diana Roxana Galos and Nevena Kulic in Sociology

The increase in inequalities during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been the topic of intense scholarly and public debate. School closures are one of the containment measures that have been debated most critically in this regard. What drives support for school and daycare/kindergarten closures during a public health crisis such as the current COVID-19 pandemic? More specifically, do inequality concerns affect this support? To identify causal linkages between awareness of inequalities and support for school and daycare/kindergarten closures, we use a survey experiment with information treatment, in which we randomly assign information designed to prime the respondents to think about either education inequality, gender inequality, or both. Based on an original survey experiment involving more than 3,000 respondents, conducted in spring 2021 at the end of a long lockdown in Germany, our findings show that concerns about education inequality and gender inequality are equally important for decreasing support for preschool and primary school closures, while they do not seem to matter regarding secondary school closures. published

Vertraut die Gesellschaft ihrem Staat noch? Im zweiten Coronajahr gehen wir dieser Frage in vier Aspekten nach. Dafür untersuchen wir Wahrnehmungen und Einstellungen zu strukturellen Ungleichheiten in der Coronakrise auf der Basis repräsentativer Befragungen mit mehreren tausend Teilnehmenden. Das Ergebnis sind vier Kurzstudien: Wir betrachten das öffentliche Vertrauen in die Krisenresilienz des Gesundheitssystems. Wir untersuchen, ob sich am Zugang zu Impfungen Fairnessdebatten entzünden. Wir analysieren, inwiefern die Corona-Eindämmungsmaßnahmen in der Bevölkerung negative Reaktionen bis hin zur Radikalisierung hervorbringen. Schließlich richten wir den Blick auf Mehrbelastungen durch Kinderbetreuung im Lockdown. published

This article examines gender bias in the Italian academia, and whether this bias depends on one’s collaborative work and its related conventions across academic disciplines. We carry out the research by relying on status characteristics theory, which is tested via a factorial survey experiment of 2,098 associate and full-time professors employed in Italian public universities in 2019. This is one of the few experiments of the hiring process in academia conducted on a nationally representative population of university professors. Our article focuses specifically on three academic disciplines: humanities, economics, and social sciences. The results indicate that female academics in Italy are penalized for co-authoring. They receive less favorable evaluations of their competence, but only when the evaluator is a male. This gender bias is most pronounced in economics, a discipline where conventions of co-authorship allow for more uncertainty on individual contributions to a joint publication. Overall, the results partially confirm our postulates based on status characteristics theory.

Supplemental material, SOC874984_sup_mat for Advantage ‘Finds Its Way’: How Privileged Families Exploit Opportunities in Different Systems of Secondary Education by Moris Triventi, Jan Skopek, Nevena Kulic, Sandra Buchholz and Hans-Peter Blossfeld in Sociology

This article investigates the role of the gender composition of selection committees and the role of connections in promoting women in research activities. Exploiting a newly collected data set on recruitment processes to entry-level research positions in a leading Italian research centre operating mainly in the hard sciences, the study finds that bias against women manifests itself at non-tenured entry level and is attenuated by the presence of a woman on the selection committee. However, the most important predictor for recruitment in the study is previous connections with the research centre, a mechanism which, due the lower density of network links with the institute among female candidates, operates as a selection device discriminating against women. The results suggest that gender of the committee members, network structure and type of recruitment must all be taken into account in approaching recruitment policy and that very early stages of scientific careers are crucial for addressing gender bias in research.

Since the 1960s, the allocation of resources in couples has been the object of much research in both the fields of economics and sociology. Today, the growth of women’s economic independence and their increased potential to control economic resources within their households raise important questions about the dynamics of intra-household sharing and calls for a reconsideration of existing theories on the allocation of household resources. This article reviews, in a non-technical way, the two lines of research, in economics and sociology respectively, which have focused on the sharing of financial resources within a common unit of analysis: the household. After outlining their alternative applications and highlighting the similarities and differences between the two – starting from the unitary models of behaviour and encompassing bargaining theory, collective goods, and transaction cost approach – we discuss new developments in the form of the dynamic models and preference theory. Finally, we reflect on the challenges that the field currently faces and suggest possible pathways for future research.

Partly based on Patricia MCMULLIN's EUI PhD thesis, 2016