Inequality at Work: Perspectives on Race, Gender, Class, and Labor

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Scholars disagree about the role that race and gender play in the labor market. On the one hand, they argue that gender and race fundamentally structure labor market opportunity, contributing to growing inequality. Yet others contend that while race and gender may be interconnected categories, they do not definitively affect labor market opportunity in the long term. This disconnect results from the fact that the study of work and labor and the analysis of the impacts of race, gender, and class often proceed on parallel tracks. The intersection of race and gender shapes the life chances of all workers, affording some privileges and others disadvantages that shape labor market behavior – including failures, detours, and successes. The occupational structure is a key location where racial and gender differences are transformed into class inequality, as well as a mechanism by which racial and gender inequality persist. Yet, the uneven distribution of workers across occupations and the grouping of racial/ethnic minorities and women in undesirable places is not comprehensively told.

This new book series on Inequality at Work: Perspectives on Race, Gender, Class, and Labor will provide a platform for cultivating and disseminating scholarship that deepens our knowledge of the social understandings and implications of work, particularly scholarship that joins empirical investigations with social analysis, cultural critique and historical perspectives. We are especially interested in books that center on the experiences of marginalized workers; that explore the mechanisms (e.g., state or organizational policy) that cause occupational inequality to grow and become entrenched over time; that show us how workers make sense of and articulate their constraints as well as resist them; and have particular timeliness and/or social significance. Prospective topics might include books about migrant labor, rising economic insecurity, enduring gender inequality, public and private sector divisions, glass ceilings (gender limitations at work) and concrete walls (racial limitations at work), or racial/gender identity at work in the Black Lives Matter era.