DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

Area(s) of Interest

Inequality, Gender, Race, Work, Organizations, Family

Biography

Kate Weisshaar is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of gender, racial, and economic inequality in the United States.

Her research falls under three specific areas: (1) the consequences of gendered work-family arrangements; (2) gendered evaluations in work organizations; (3) gendered and racialized labor market outcomes. In the first area, she studies how the gendered organization of work and family in the United States can have short- and long-term consequences on individuals’ careers and work opportunities. For example, one project considers how parents who temporarily left work to care for children face disadvantages in regaining employment; another project shows that gendered and racialized employment trajectories in early- to mid-career can lead to lasting wage penalties in later career stages. In the second area, she studies how gendered beliefs can subtly shape work evaluation outcomes differently for men and women in organizations—leading to inequality in promotion, pay, and work assignments. In the third area, she examines how gender and race simultaneously shape labor market opportunities. In collaboration with Koji Chavez and Tania Hutt, several projects illustrate the complexity of gender and racial discrimination in hiring decisions. For example, one project considers how organizational pressures to diversify shape hiring discrimination by applicants’ gender and race across job level. Another project illustrates how the extent of job applicants’ match to job requirements relates to gender and racial discrimination levels in hiring. Across her work, Weisshaar uses a range of research methods, primarily using quantitative and experimental methods, while also using qualitative methods for some projects.

Publications

Weisshaar, Katherine*, Koji Chavez*, and Tania Hutt. 2024. “Hiring Discrimination Under Pressures to Diversify: Gender, Race, and Diversity Commodification Across Job Transitions in Software Engineering.” American Sociological Review 89(3): 584-613. *Equal authorship.

Chavez, Koji*, Katherine Weisshaar*, and Tania Cabello-Hutt. 2022. “Gender and Racial Discrimination in Hiring Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Field Experiment of Accountants, 2018-2020.” Work and Occupations 49(3): 275-315. *Equal authorship. 

Correll, Shelley, Katherine Weisshaar, Alison Wynn, and JoAnne Wehner. 2020. “Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment.” American Sociological Review 85(6): 1022-1050.

Weisshaar, Katherine*, and Tania Cabello-Hutt*. 2020. “Labor Force Participation Over the Life Course: The Long-Term Effects of Employment Trajectories on Wages and the Gender Wage Gap.” Demography 57: 33-50. *Equal authorship.

Weisshaar, Katherine. 2018. “From Opt Out to Blocked Out: The Challenges for Labor Market Re-entry After Family-Related Employment Lapses.” American Sociological Review 83(1): 34-60.

Weisshaar, Katherine. 2017. “Publish and Perish?: An Assessment of Gender Gaps in Promotion to Tenure in Academia.” Social Forces 96(2): 529-560.