Huffman and Treas receive two top paper awards for research on motherhood penalty
Huffman and Treas receive two top paper awards for research on motherhood penalty
- October 14, 2015
- Honors come from ASA sections, awarded at annual meeting
Matt Huffman (pictured top) and Judy Treas (pictured right), UCI sociology professors,
received two best paper awards from the American Sociological Association for their
work on the motherhood penalty.
In “The Parity Penalty in Life Course Perspective: Motherhood and Occupational Status in 13 European Countries,” published last October in the American Sociological Review, they found that motherhood imposes a long-term professional penalty from which women in the workforce never fully recover. Using data from 1994 to 2001 collected by the European Community Household Panel, which tracked the occupational and childbirth histories of 13,615 partnered women, ages 18-40, across 13 European countries, they looked at how motherhood affected occupational trajectories, considering not just the contemporaneous impact of a birth but the long-term consequences. They found that the arrival of a first child packed the biggest punch to a woman’s career progress, most immediately in lost work hours and job experience. The career costs are less pronounced in countries that allocate more funds to child care.
Their study won the Outstanding Article Award from ASA’s Inequality, Poverty and Mobility section, and the Outstanding Publication Award from the Aging and Life Course section.
Huffman accepted the award for their work at the ASA annual meeting held in Chicago in late August. Treas is currently in the Netherlands heading up UC’s Study Abroad Program.
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