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Investigating Religion and Inequality through Women's Work‐Family Pathways
Author(s) -
Gilliland Claire Chipman
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal for the scientific study of religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1468-5906
pISSN - 0021-8294
DOI - 10.1111/jssr.12676
Subject(s) - religiosity , cohabitation , respondent , national longitudinal surveys , national survey of family growth , protestantism , ethnic group , educational attainment , family life , gender studies , sociology , psychology , inequality , social psychology , demographic economics , demography , family planning , political science , population , mathematical analysis , mathematics , economics , anthropology , law , research methodology
This project investigates the relationship between religious involvement and women's work and family pathways in the United States. I identify five work‐family configurations using National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) data and latent class analysis. These configurations incorporate cohabitation histories, timing of family formation, and maternal employment. Then, I analyze how adolescent religiosity and personal and family characteristics are associated with subsequent work‐family pathways. Affiliation with an evangelical Protestant tradition is associated with women who form families early, while Catholic affiliation is tied to later family formation. Importantly, family background characteristics such as living with both biological parents and higher parental education, as well as race/ethnicity and the respondent's educational attainment, are the most consistent variables associated with work‐family configurations. These results suggest that religious involvement, when considered alongside family background, contributes to women's unequal work‐family pathways in adulthood. The close links between religion, family, and stratification are evident in the study of women's work‐family experiences.