On April 7, Professor Donald Tomaskovic-Devey (sociology) will discuss his recent work in a talk titled “Identifying Equal and Unequal Opportunity Workplaces.”
As Tomaskovic-Devey will explain, the current regulatory function of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is largely reactive. Individuals, and more rarely groups, file discrimination complaints and the EEOC reviews the complaint. Litigation is rare, and most complaints are at the individual level and are ineffective in changing firm behavior.
But Tomaskovic-Devey asks, What if the EEOC could identify a set of employers with very low representation of women or minorities in the firm or in management and target them for proactive enforcement? His project aims to develop a diagnostic model, using the EEOC’s own data, as to the pool of best and worst organizations in terms of the diversity of their workforce.
Tomaskovic-Devey is past chair of the sociology department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also past secretary of the American Sociological Association and president of the Southern Sociological Society. Tomaskovic-Devey is currently doing research on the income distribution consequences of the financialization of the U.S. economy, long-term trends in workplace sex and race segregation, and developing theoretical and empirical models on the relationship between the labor process and workplace inequality. Recent publications from these projects have appeared in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Work & Occupations, the American Sociological Review, and the American Journal of Sociology.
This is the final lecture in CPPA’s spring 2014 Faculty Colloquium series, which consists of informal talks, often about works-in-progress, with presenters providing a significant amount of time for audience discussion and feedback. All talks are in Thompson 620, from 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. They are open to the public and brown bag lunches are welcome.