Sociology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
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Item DOES WOMEN'S CONTINUATION IN THE LABOR FORCE MATTER FOR UNION FORMATION? AN ASSESSMENT OF EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA.(2024) Hurtado, Constanza; Sayer, Liana C.; Caudillo, Mónica L.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Social scientists have long been interested in the interplay between women’s roles as paid employees, partners and mothers. One of the first puzzles they intended to solve was about the consequences of women’s participation in the labor force for marriage. Currently, evidence about high-income Western countries overwhelming supports that women’s employment does not hinder union formation generally or marriage specifically. This conclusion is consistent when looking at multiple dimensions of employment, including earnings, employment status, economic potential, and job quality. Women’s employment engagement during the transition to adulthood have received scarce attention as a determinant of whether and when women move in with a romantic partner for the first time. In particular, and despite its relevance to understanding family-work dynamics across life, the relationship between continuous employment, the number of years employed without breaks/interruptions, and union formation has been overlooked. Additionally, despite increasing rates of women’s participation in the labor force and drastic sociodemographic changes in the last decades, the association between women’s employment and union formation in Latin American countries has been scarcely examined. To address these two gaps in the existing literature, this dissertation analyzes whether—and how—employment engagement influences women’s transitions into their first unions. Specifically, I measure and compare two dimensions of employment during the transition to adulthood: 1) the number of cumulative years/months of employment, and 2) the number of years/months of continuous employment. For this purpose, I analyze three nationally representative longitudinal and retrospective datasets, and focus on the experiences of women born in the 1970s or later in Mexico, Chile, and the U.S. The results confirm the relevance of women’s employment engagement on decisions toward moving in with a romantic partner for the first time, highlighting differences between the two employment dimensions, as well as between contexts. By contrasting cumulative and continuous employment, the dissertation contributes to our understanding of why and how women’s employment shapes union formation. It also invites us to expand theories about the interplay between women’s economic position and family from a comparative perspective. Given the increasing uncertainty of labor markets, it also motivates further exploration about the role of expectations and experiences of continuous employment on family transitions.Item Trust, Commitment, Fidelity, and Condom Use among Young Adults in Tanzania(2008-04-24) Hattori, Megan Klein; Larsen, Ulla; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)With an estimated 7 percent of Tanzanian adults HIV positive and no cure or vaccine available, preventing HIV infection remains central to fighting the AIDS epidemic. For sexually active individuals there are two ways to avoid HIV infection: fidelity with an uninfected partner or consistent condom use. Trust and commitment play a complex but critical role in both fidelity and condom use. Research on the link between trust and condom use is emerging, yet the relationship between trust, commitment, and fidelity has yet to be explored. Of the three standard methods of AIDS prevention--abstinence, fidelity, and condom use--fidelity remains relatively under-researched. This dissertation aims to improve our understanding of trust and commitment in Tanzania and the relationship that trust and commitment have with fidelity and condom use using multiple theories and multiple methods (semi-structured in-depth interviews and in-person survey interviews). Analysis of in-depth interviews with young residents of Mtoni, Dar es Salaam suggests that the youth place an important value on satisfaction with their relationship, feeling that their partners understand them, being able to rely on their partners for instrumental and emotional support, and their partner's sexual fidelity. The youth in Mtoni often found it difficult to differentiate trust from commitment and trust from fidelity. Path analysis suggests that equity theory and investment theory do not accurately describe the development of commitment among Tanzanian youth. Identity theory, however, may accurately explain the development of trust and commitment among Tanzanian youth. We found associations in our data that are consistent with the identity theory model. Analysis of the in-depth interviews suggested that sexual fidelity, trust, and commitment are important to stable relationships yet that once sexual fidelity, trust, and commitment are established, the couple is unlikely to use condoms. However, the associations expected between these variables were not clearly evident in the quantitative data. A generalized trust in one's partner was not found to be associated with a lower level of condom use. Similarly, we did not find that a general trust in a partner or a general feeling of commitment was related to fidelity.