It’s called the gender gap.
But Christy Glass, a professor of sociology at Utah State University, has found that this economic divide, prevalent in societies across the globe, is not just about sex — it’s about motherhood.
“There’s growing awareness among scholars that a lot of what we have assumed are gender disparities, or differences between men and women, in terms of wages, promotions or access to jobs, is actually not gender based, but motherhood based,” Glass said.
When researchers removed mothers from gender-wage statistics there was very little difference in earnings, Glass said. When mothers were factored in, there was a much larger discrepancy in their salaries.
Beth Kiester, a doctoral student and graduate instructor in the sociology department, has been working with Glass since 2008. Kiester has found that men with children do not face the same discrimination as mothers.
“Men with children are not only not penalized,” Kiester said, “but they benefit.”
“We’re looking at a more mental level,” Kiester said. “We’re looking at what the employers are actually doing — what the employers are actually thinking.”
Kiester said they have decided to conduct their study in this manner because it offers a better answer to why there is a wage discrepancy amongst the genders than statistics and data.
Both of Glass’ studies were conducted out of the country and in the global job market. Glass chose to conduct her study in Budapest, Hungary, because it became a “mini capital” for global finance.
For four years Glass interviewed Hungarian employers on how they recruited.
Hungary’s recruiters worked to hire both men and women, but when women had children or are “at risk for having children, they tend to seek out ways to shed them from their labor force,” Glass said.
“My findings were really actually startling,” Glass said. “I had a lot of people tell me that employers wouldn’t be honest about their discriminatory practices, but I found that employers were extremely forthcoming.”
While it is illegal in Hungary for employers to discriminate against women because they had children, many employers did not heed the law, Glass said. The laxity with which employers reported their discriminatory practices was evidence of how poorly the anti-discrimination law was enforced, Glass said.
“All employment is discriminatory,” Kiester said. “Whenever you hire somebody, you’re choosing them over somebody else… It’s when it becomes problematic that we care. So, if a woman or a mother or a father or a veteran are having wages reduced, then we find that problematic.”
Kiester is currently in the process of replicating Glass’s Hungary study in the U.S.
“I think there’s a climate of political correctness in the United States,” Kiester said. “That may make it difficult to replicate.”
It is too early to tell whether employer’s motivations will be similar for firing or not hiring mothers as they were in Hungary, Kiester said.
Kiester is a working mother and said she has not felt discrimination because of the status.
“When we see highly standardized, highly formalized job searches and recruitment practices we tend to see significantly less discrimination,” said Glass.
Miles Maynes used to be a frequent plagiarizer.
He never got caught. He never felt guilty — until he started scientific research of his own.
“I realized that at some point in the future, I may be publishing my own work,” Maynes said.
In a survey by U.S. News and World Report, 75 percent of college students admitted to cheating.
Five Utah State University students have taken on the task of researching plagiarism, an activity that can result in failing grades and, in serious cases, expulsion.
In November 2011, Jessica Christensen, C.J. Zobell and Heather Haderlie started their work by comparing dissertations. They were looking for incidences of plagiarism. In recent months the group has added Rebecca Feller and Tyson Mertlick to their team. They will present their data at the USU Student Showcase on April 2.
The research team will also be giving three different presentations on the subject at the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association conference in Reno, Nev., on April 12.
“We’ve done quite a bit of coding already and have come across a lot of issues in detecting plagiarism,” said Christensen, who is also the president of the Psi Chi International Psychology Honors Society. “A big part of our study is to show how difficult it is to define plagiarism... because there are so many different perspectives and definitions.”
“Turn it In” is a program commonly used by professors to catch plagiarism among their students. The program compares an uploaded document to previously published material and then provides a list of plagiarized areas. The group is evaluating the effectiveness of programs like these.
“They are very useful to detect plagiarism,” Christensen said, “but it grossly overestimates the amount of plagiarism in any given document, not accounting for common phrases, or methodological and statistical terminology.”
The study may change the way the academic community will define and enforce policies on plagiarism in the future, Christensen said.
Upon the event that a student is caught committing an act of plagiarism, a professor has multiple options. According to USU academic policies, penalties include probation, suspension and expulsion.
In the 15 years he’s spent teaching college courses, Steven Shively, associate professor for the USU English department, has dealt with approximately 18 cases that were serious enough to fail a student.
“My students are mostly English majors and minors; I believe such students know not to lift material extensively from another source,” Shively said.
In a recent situation, Shively reported the violation to the office of the vice president for student services.
“The student had a formal opportunity to appeal my decision, but did not do so,” Shively said.
Maynes said that once he got involved in his own research, he realized how long such work takes, “and how long they spent in the lab getting results and compiling information. To me, their paper didn’t represent anything more than 25 words on a page but to them, that paper represented thousands of hours of work.”
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