Research Profile
Broadly, my research reflects an enduring commitment to addressing critical questions about political and gender inequality through international and interdisciplinary collaborations. As a quantitative political sociologist, I examine gendered political change over time and in cross-national perspective, as well as the meaning of family and gender in the political culture of the U.S. and Western industrialized democracies.
My work demonstrates that we all benefit when women are politically empowered.
Gender Equality and Policy Institutions
My early scholarship focused on the importance of gender equality for welfare state spending and development and this has evolved to a focus on the gendered organization of legislative bodies. My ongoing work focuses on better understanding the institutionalization of gender within political organizations and legislative institutions.
In work published in the top gender studies journal, Gender & Society, I examined women’s and men’s placements on legislative committees and as committee leaders across thirty years in Germany, Sweden, and the U.S. I found stark cross-national differences in opportunities for policy-makers to engage on different issues. For example, the U.S. alone lacks a standing committee devoted to social policy, an area where women in other countries have carved out a dominant niche. Further, in each nation, women are largely excluded from leadership, reducing their proportionate power and policy influence, regardless of their overall representation on committees
Citizenship, Political Participation, and Gender Inequality
Much of my ongoing work focuses on understanding public opinion regarding changing notions of citizenship, political participation and gender inequality across a variety of national and regional contexts, often in collaboration with co-author Hilde Coffé. Our work began by answering questions about how women’s and men’s norms and behaviors around citizenship differed, and what that indicates about how we conceptualize and measure political engagement. We lately focus on questions about why women and men so often differ in their attitudes and behaviors.
With colleagues Amy Alexander and Farida Jalalzai we published Measuring Women’s Political Empowerment across the Globe (2018; Palgrave). The volume brings together an international group of scholars and is the first theoretical treatment of the diverse, multi-level, international issues at the center of measuring women’s political empowerment.
Family as a Site of Inequality
I also have ongoing projects that view family as a site of inequality according to gender, race, political rights, and sexual orientation.
A major contribution in this line of research is my co-authored book, Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans’ Definitions of Family (with Brian Powell, Claudia Geist, and Lala Carr Steelman), published with Russell Sage. This research monograph constituted one of the first empirical projects to document the dramatic increase in public acceptance of same-sex couples as family, even while gendered assumptions of marriage and child-rearing continued to shape American familial beliefs. It received awards from Family Sociology Section of the ASA, the North Central Sociological Association, and the Midwest Sociological Society.