Kate Weisshaar
Associate Professor of Sociology
PhD, Sociology, Stanford University, 2016
Kate Weisshaar’s 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; and (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. In the second area, she studies how gendered beliefs can subtly shape work evaluations 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 and how labor market context affects gender and racial inequality. Across her work, Weisshaar uses a range of research methods, primarily using quantitative and experimental methods, while also using qualitative methods for some projects.
Weisshaar’s work has been published in journals such as American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Demography, and has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. She was previously an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center.
Current Research
Gender and racial discrimination in hiring: In collaboration with Koji Chavez (Indiana University) and Tania Hutt (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), Weisshaar examines patterns of gender and racial discrimination in hiring across labor market contexts, occupations, and applicant characteristics. The broader project considers questions such as: How does discrimination in hiring against Black men, Black women, and White women, compared to White men, vary by job level in male-dominated occupations? How do pressures to diversify affect patterns of gender and racial discrimination in hiring? How does a job applicant’s degree of matching to a job’s requirements shape the extent of discrimination they face? How did the COVID-19 pandemic and the changing labor market affect patterns of gender and racial discrimination? These questions take an intersectional approach to hiring discrimination to assess the contextual processes that shape gender and racial inequality in employment outcomes.
Workplace meetings and inequality: This ongoing project, with multiple collaborators including Christianne Corbett (University of Arkansas), Koji Chavez (Indiana University), and Shannon Gilmartin (Stanford University), considers how workplace meetings can be a source of inequality within organizations. Using novel data on work meetings and work outcomes in a large company, the project speaks to how interpersonal dynamics can shape inequality in workplaces. Specifically, one area of the project examines how workplace meetings can create different advantages and disadvantages for men and women employees in terms of promotion and compensation. Another sub-project considers meeting patterns before, during, and after employees take parental leave. This project sheds light on the role of informal and interpersonal networks in workplace inequality.
Gender pay inequality within organizations: In this area, Weisshaar considers how organizations make sense of and can reduce or sustain the gender wage gap within particular social policy contexts. For example, a project with Mabel Abraham (Columbia University) considers how organizations change their gender pay inequality over time following a pay transparency policy change and the role that organizational narratives play in shaping changes to gender pay gaps.
Selected Publications
Rivera, L., K. Weisshaar, and A. Tilcsik. 2024. “Disparate Impact? Career Disruptions and COVID-19 Impact Statements in Tenure Evaluations.” Sociological Science 11: 626–48.
Weisshaar, K.*, K. Chavez*, and T. 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, K.*, K. Weisshaar*, and T. 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, S., K.Weisshaar, A. Wynn, and J. Wehner. 2020. “Inside the Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance Assessment.” American Sociological Review 85(6): 1022–50.
Weisshaar, K.*, and T. 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, K. 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.
