Social Forces最新文献

Narrations of non-motherhood: how context shapes what it means to be childless in the United States and Japan 非母性的叙述：语境如何塑造美国和日本的无子女意味着什么

IF 4.8 1区社会学

Social Forces Pub Date : 2026-03-30 DOI: 10.1093/sf/soag026

Holly Hummer

{"title":"Narrations of non-motherhood: how context shapes what it means to be childless in the United States and Japan","authors":"Holly Hummer","doi":"10.1093/sf/soag026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soag026","url":null,"abstract":"In our era of low fertility rates, much research has examined factors behind delayed childbearing and childlessness. While scholars emphasize the role of macro-level context in constraining reproductive decision-making, less attention has been paid to how context shapes what it means, subjectively, to remain childless today. For women, whose childlessness has long been theorized as a deviant, stigmatized identity, this question is especially salient. Drawing on 157 interviews with non-mothers in two countries with distinct family landscapes, Japan and the United States, this paper comparatively analyzes how women experience and evaluate childlessness. Japanese participants were more likely to frame not having children as increasingly normalized and justifiable via entrenched gender inequalities whereas American participants were more likely to emphasize the socially isolating and publicly contested nature of childlessness, often drawing on moral logics to justify non-motherhood. To contextualize these divergences, I elaborate on two perceptual processes that emerged as relevant to women’s narratives: their views on the (in)flexibility of becoming and being a “good” mother and their interpretations of national demographic conditions. Together, these findings advance an understanding of childlessness as a status imbued with distinct meanings that are subject to cultural and demographic specificities.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"237 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147536270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

From persuasion to evasion: anti -collective action and the making of affordable housing in suburban Chicago 从说服到逃避：反集体行动与芝加哥郊区经济适用房的建设

IF 4.8 1区社会学

Social Forces Pub Date : 2026-03-21 DOI: 10.1093/sf/soag022

John N Robinson, Lillian Leung

{"title":"From persuasion to evasion: anti -collective action and the making of affordable housing in suburban Chicago","authors":"John N Robinson, Lillian Leung","doi":"10.1093/sf/soag022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soag022","url":null,"abstract":"NIMBY—or “Not in my Back Yard”—opposition against renters has long defined segregation and housing markets in the United States. Recent years, however, have seen the rise of a new phenomenon: YIMBY or “Yes in my Back Yard” efforts, which have aimed to expand affordable housing supply for renters in lower-poverty places that have long restricted it. The clash between NIMBY and YIMBY poses a problem: how do actors effectuate change in markets where they face difficulties mobilizing and building coalitions? This article presents data on an example where developers have made demonstrable affordable housing gains: properties funded by the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit have been widely built in suburban Chicago, specifically in lower-poverty areas. Drawing on interviews with the developers who build this housing, our findings show that developers often favor what we refer to as anti-collective action—tactics meant to sideline and circumvent audiences that developers deem unwinnable, rather than persuade or mobilize them. Findings therefore urge more attention to actors’ perceptions of the possibilities and limits of collective action—what we refer to as coalitional latitude—which vary by setting, and condition the choices and tactics that actors pursue. We explore implications for sociological work on the processes and conditions of change in economic fields.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147495349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Discordant attitudes, desires, and behaviors: sexual cognitive dissonance in the transition to adulthood 不协调的态度、欲望和行为：过渡到成年期的性认知失调

IF 4.8 1区社会学

Social Forces Pub Date : 2026-03-20 DOI: 10.1093/sf/soag021

Michelle A Eilers, Abigail Weitzman

引用次数: 0

Organizational accountability and gender segregation: can bureaucratic reforms drive organizational change? 组织问责制与性别隔离：官僚改革能否推动组织变革？

IF 4.8 1区社会学

Social Forces Pub Date : 2026-02-26 DOI: 10.1093/sf/soag003

Kevin Stainback

{"title":"Organizational accountability and gender segregation: can bureaucratic reforms drive organizational change?","authors":"Kevin Stainback","doi":"10.1093/sf/soag003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soag003","url":null,"abstract":"Gender segregation is a core indicator of organizational inequality with downstream implications for wages, authority, and career mobility. Its causes and consequences have been studied extensively, yet much less is known about the organizational practices that may reduce it. This study addresses this gap by examining the effects of accountability practices on workplace gender integration. Scholars have identified three key aspects of organizational accountability: setting diversity goals, assigning responsibility, and monitoring and reviewing personnel decisions. These practices are widely believed to be effective; however, surprisingly little empirical research has examined which practices work to reduce inequality. Previous studies have primarily focused on assigning responsibility to a staff position or department (e.g., human resource or diversity manager), with few examining diversity goals or monitoring and reviewing practices. Analyzing a nationally representative panel dataset of British workplaces (2004–2011), this study finds that implementing diversity goals, assigning oversight to a human resource professional, and monitoring and reviewing personnel decisions significantly reduce gender segregation. These effects remain robust across models controlling for other practices theorized to reduce gender segregation, women’s managerial representation, and changes in employment during the Great Recession. These findings underscore how accountability-based bureaucratic reforms can advance workplace integration.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"347 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147319556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Outgroups and ingroups: how support for torture and aggressive counterterrorism policies varies by extremist type 外群体和内群体：对酷刑和激进反恐政策的支持如何因极端主义类型而异

IF 4.8 1区社会学

Social Forces Pub Date : 2025-11-23 DOI: 10.1093/sf/soaf190

Murat Haner, Melissa M Sloan, Justin T Pickett, Francis T Cullen

{"title":"Outgroups and ingroups: how support for torture and aggressive counterterrorism policies varies by extremist type","authors":"Murat Haner, Melissa M Sloan, Justin T Pickett, Francis T Cullen","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf190","url":null,"abstract":"As domestic terrorism has become central to US national security, the American public has shown divided reactions to political violence. In the current context of increasing political polarization and racial tension, we draw on social identity theory to compare responses to Islamist, left-wing, and right-wing terrorism and identify moderators of those responses. Analyses of data from a 2022 national survey experiment (n = 1,300) reveal that Americans’ responses to terrorism depend heavily on who is doing the terrorizing. Whereas Americans are equally outraged by Islamist, right-wing, and left-wing terrorism, support for controversial policies varies by terrorist type, with greater support for the use of torture on Islamist terrorists. Our findings also point toward the importance of Republicanism and white nationalist sentiment. Compared to Democrats, Republicans were more supportive of policy and the use of torture targeting Islamist terrorists and less supportive of policy targeting right-wing extremists. In addition, white nationalist sentiment corresponded to increased support for aggressive counterterrorism policy and the use of torture when applied to left-wing and Islamist terrorists. As public opinion is key to the development of government policies, it is critical that policymakers recognize the role of outgroup animosity in public support of counterterrorism measures.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"85 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145575554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Economic inequality and economic segregation: a systematic review of causal pathways 经济不平等和经济隔离：因果路径的系统回顾

IF 4.8 1区社会学

Social Forces Pub Date : 2025-11-23 DOI: 10.1093/sf/soaf195

Clémentine Cottineau-Mugadza

{"title":"Economic inequality and economic segregation: a systematic review of causal pathways","authors":"Clémentine Cottineau-Mugadza","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf195","url":null,"abstract":"Although economic inequality and economic segregation represent fundamental challenges of contemporary societies, their causal and empirical connections remain unclear. In particular, the direction of causality, causal pathways, and temporalities are not evident in the literature. This gap has two probable origins: (1) the discussion is dominated by a handful of studies from the United Stated published in the 2000s. This comes at the expense of a more plural and complex understanding of the phenomena in the rest of the world. (2) The literature on inequality and that of segregation are segmented by disciplines operating at different scales with corresponding theories, actors and mechanisms. To address these issues, I conduct an extensive systematic literature review of articles linking economic inequality to economic segregation across multiple languages and disciplines. Starting from 20,000+ references, I identify 80 relevant research articles to review. Most conclude that variations in economic segregation follow differences in economic inequality in the short term and that reverse causality is more probable in the longer term. The housing market is the most cited mediator between economic inequality and economic segregation, and a diversity of theories are mobilized to explain their empirical connections. Many articles are not presently comparable, but compatible definitions and measurements of inequality and segregation are rising.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145575557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Managing motherhood: how “queen bee” managers in the US service sector reduce motherhood advantages in work scheduling 管理母性：美国服务业的“蜂后”经理人如何在工作安排上降低母性优势

IF 4.8 1区社会学

Social Forces Pub Date : 2025-11-20 DOI: 10.1093/sf/soaf193

Joshua Choper

{"title":"Managing motherhood: how “queen bee” managers in the US service sector reduce motherhood advantages in work scheduling","authors":"Joshua Choper","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf193","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf193","url":null,"abstract":"This study advances sociological theories of motherhood-based workplace inequalities by examining how frontline managers shape mothers’ access to stable work schedules in the US service sector. Prior research has shown that mothers in the US service sector experience intense conflict between the time demands of motherhood and employers’ expectations that employees will be available to work unstable work schedules, yet little work has investigated sources of variation in mothers’ exposure to schedule instability. Building on and synthesizing theories of homophily, expectation states theory, and “queen bee” theories of women in management, I propose a model in which managers’ own gender and parenthood status structure their responses to their employees’ scheduling needs. Female managers who are mothers are theorized to exhibit homophily and produce motherhood scheduling advantages, while female managers without children are expected to penalize mothers. Analyses of survey and experimental data collected from a large national sample of US retail and food service workers support this theoretical synthesis, showing that motherhood advantages in scheduling appear under male managers and female managers who are mothers, but erode under female managers without children. By positioning motherhood—not gender alone—as the status dimension that most directly collides with ideal worker norms, this work highlights an important determinant of when women in management act as agents of change and when they reinforce inequality. More broadly, this study frames managerial discretion as a key mechanism linking status expectations, manager-employee relations, and organizational outcomes, advancing theory on the micro-foundations of workplace inequality.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145553560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Institutional contestations and educational equity: incorporation of the marginalized in National Education Policies Worldwide, 1960–2019 制度争议与教育公平：1960-2019年世界各国教育政策中边缘化群体的纳入

IF 4.8 1区社会学

Social Forces Pub Date : 2025-11-19 DOI: 10.1093/sf/soaf192

Jieun Song

{"title":"Institutional contestations and educational equity: incorporation of the marginalized in National Education Policies Worldwide, 1960–2019","authors":"Jieun Song","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf192","url":null,"abstract":"The notion that everyone deserves education and that governments need to strive for this ideal has been legitimized and expanded worldwide over the past few decades, as a central part of the successful establishment of a liberal world order. However, the recent resurgence of global illiberalism poses a threat to liberal ideas of equity and diversity, potentially impeding progress toward a more inclusive education system. Against this backdrop, I investigate the extent to which countries around the world introduced policies to incorporate historically disadvantaged populations into education between 1960 and 2019 and what sociocultural factors are associated with the adoption of education policies for the marginalized. Using event count analyses and a novel longitudinal dataset on global education reforms, I show that countries are more likely to adopt education policies for the marginalized when liberalism is globally prevalent, while they are less likely to do so when illiberalism is globally prominent. I also find that countries’ linkages to international liberal or illiberal institutions, including through organized transnational networks, as well as domestic sociopolitical environments, relate to the adoption of education policies for the marginalized. These results help illuminate how countries exist in a world filled with opposing cultural models and through which mechanisms their approaches to educational equity are shaped by such global forces. While focused on education for the marginalized, these findings offer insights into understanding inequality in a changing world context of growing illiberalism.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145553561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Do university-educated families lose their edge as education expands? The withering performance and advantage of their children 随着教育的扩大，受过大学教育的家庭是否失去了优势？他们的孩子的表现和优势

IF 4.8 1区社会学

Social Forces Pub Date : 2025-11-14 DOI: 10.1093/sf/soaf189

Manuel T Valdés, Fabrizio Bernardi, Ilaria Lievore

{"title":"Do university-educated families lose their edge as education expands? The withering performance and advantage of their children","authors":"Manuel T Valdés, Fabrizio Bernardi, Ilaria Lievore","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf189","url":null,"abstract":"Extensive research has examined the effect of educational expansion in one cohort on educational inequality and occupational returns in that same cohort. This study makes a novel contribution by exploring whether the expansion of university education among parents affects their children’s academic achievement. We argue that this expansion reduces the selectivity of university attainment, making graduates progressively less selected on traits relevant to their children’s achievement. Additionally, expansion likely diminishes occupational returns on a university degree, increasing the proportion of overqualified university-graduated parents. Consequently, the average achievement of children from university-educated families should diminish with this expansion among parents. Using data from 30 countries across seven waves of the Program for International Student Assessment, we show that students from university-educated families experience a notable decline in achievement as the proportion of university-educated parents increases. Importantly, the growing over-qualification of university-educated parents and the diminishing objectified cultural capital of university-educated families mediate this negative effect. Furthermore, we also observe a negative association between educational expansion among parents and children’s achievement in non-university-educated families, but less pronounced, resulting in a negative (albeit modest) association between expansion among parents and inequality among children.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145515838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The bodily scars of legal violence: local immigration enforcement, state immigrant policy, and health inequality 法律暴力的身体伤痕：地方移民执法、州移民政策和健康不平等

IF 4.8 1区社会学

Social Forces Pub Date : 2025-11-09 DOI: 10.1093/sf/soaf181

Courtney E Boen, Nick Graetz, Atheendar Venkataramani, Robin Ortiz

{"title":"The bodily scars of legal violence: local immigration enforcement, state immigrant policy, and health inequality","authors":"Courtney E Boen, Nick Graetz, Atheendar Venkataramani, Robin Ortiz","doi":"10.1093/sf/soaf181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf181","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past three decades in the United States, a surge of federal, state, and local laws and policies has increased levels of immigration enforcement and eroded immigrant access to public services and benefits. While a large body of research documents the deleterious effects of these forms of legal violence for a range of immigrant outcomes like poverty, employment, and schooling, the health consequences of these sociopolitical shifts for aging adults remain to be better understood. Linking panel data from the Health and Retirement Study (2004–2016) (n = 18,259) to longitudinal data on county immigration enforcement and state immigrant policies, we estimate three-way fixed-effects models to examine how changes in immigration enforcement and policy shape physical and physiological health at the intersection of race-ethnicity and immigration status. Results show that as local immigration enforcement intensifies and state policy contexts become more hostile toward immigrants, foreign-born adults—especially Latinx immigrants—experience accelerated health decline. Like episodes of physical violence that can leave lacerations and damage—both visible and more concealed—our results provide evidence of the health harms of state-sanctioned violence: what we call bodily scars of legal violence. Taken together, this research shows how policies governing the surveillance and control of immigrants not only shape structures of racial domination and immigrant exclusion but the embodied health inequities that flow from them, with implications for understanding and redressing inequities in health and aging.","PeriodicalId":48400,"journal":{"name":"Social Forces","volume":"377 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145472910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0