Charlotta Stern

Stockholm University | SU · Department of Sociology

Occupations are segregated with respect to sex, even in modern, egalitarian societies. There are strong pressures to eliminate segregation and therefore strong reasons to correctly theorize why segregation persists. The dominant view underpinning most public policies is essentially that environmental factors nudge women and men into different occup...

I och med att Covid-19-pandemin tvingade många anställda att skifta arbetsplatsen från kontoret till hemmet, tycks stigmat kring distansarbete, och framför allt hemarbete, ha minskat. Med ett möjligt slut av pandemin i sikte är frågan hur (kontors-)arbetslivet kommer att se ut framöver: Vad behöver man tänka på när man som arbetsgivare och/eller HR...

Sweden’s institutionalized employment protection legislation, ‘LAS’, is interesting theoretically because parts of it are semi-coercive. The semi-coerciveness makes it possible for firms and unions under collective agreements to negotiate departures from the law. Thus, the law is more flexible than the legal text suggests. The present study explore...

Upwards of 70% of the Covid19 death toll in Sweden has been people in elderly care services (as of mid-May 2020). We summarize the Covid19 tragedy in elderly care in Sweden, particularly in the City of Stockholm. We explain the institutional structure of elderly care administration and service provision. Those who died of Covid19 in Stockholm’s nur...

Rational choice theory is used as a general theory of action in several social science disciplines. Rational choice theory has certain common elements; at the core are actor‐based models, in which actors are assumed to act rationally. From rational action assumptions, theorists try to explain resultant aggregate outcomes. Despite such common elemen...

Why is social bias and its depressing effects on low-status or low-performing groups exaggerated? We show that the higher intelligence of academics has at best a very weak effect on reducing their bias, facilitates superficially justifying their biases, and may make them better at understanding the benefits of social conformity in general and compe...

Using Swedish registry data, we study the chances of mobility into the Swedish labour market elite for men who graduated in the years 1985−2005. The elite is defined as top earners within mid- and large sized firms and within the public sector organisations (henceforth, we use organisation for both firms and public organisations). Using discrete ti...

In my experience as a sociologist, I see many ways in which gender sociology tends to insulate itself from challenges to its own sacred beliefs and sacred causes. The sacred beliefs are to the effect that the biological differences between the sexes are minor and that the cultural differences between the genders have little basis in biological diff...

In our target article, we made four claims: (1) Social psychology is now politically homogeneous; (2) this homogeneity sometimes harms the science; (3) increasing political diversity would reduce this damage; and (4) some portion of the homogeneity is due to a hostile climate and outright discrimination against non-liberals. In this response, we re...

Hur sätts lönerna i olika branscher och företag? Hur styrande är kollektivavtalen? Vilken effekt har centraliseringsgraden, märket och individgarantierna? Används lönesättning som strategiskt verktyg? Vilka konsekvenser har detta för företagens utvecklingskraft och de anställdas löneutveckling? I Lönebildning i verkligheten redovisas ny forskning o...

Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity—particularly diversity of viewpoints—for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds sup...

Using unique Swedish register data on all employees in large private companies, we study trends in the gender composition of top wage employees from 1993 to 2007. The analyses reveal that the likelihood of women holding top wage positions has more than doubled since the early 1990s, but men are still markedly over-represented in this group of emplo...

Using Swedish registry data, we study the impact of class origin on becoming part of the business elite between 1993 and 2007 for men aged 35–44 years. The elite is defined as the top 1 per cent of wage earners within large firms. We find a clear working class disadvantage and, with time, a polarization between those of working class origin and oth...

Historically, European economists, compared to their American counterpart, were more involved in public discussions of policy. In this paper it is argued that this has likely changed. The chief reasons seem to involve the European imitation of the academic ethos that is more prevalent in America. Features of this academic ethos include a more forma...

In a recent Public Opinion Quarterly article “Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony?,” John Zipp and Rudy Fenwick pit themselves against “right-wing activists and scholars,” citing our scholarship (Klein and Stern in Academic Questions 18(1): 40–52, 2005a; Klein and Western in Academic Questions 18(1): 53–65, 2005). Here, we analyze Zipp and Fenwick’s...

Rational-choice theorizing has a long tradition within sociology, but has always been controversial and contested. Yet it has influenced the theoretical vocabulary of the discipline at large and has made deep inroads into some important sociological areas such as social movements, social mobility, and religion. Most sociological rational-choice the...

We study the political opinions of Swedish social scientists in seven disciplines. A survey was sent to 4,301 academics at 25 colleges and universities, which makes the coverage of the disciplines included more or less comprehensive. When it comes to party sympathies there are 1.3 academics on the right for each academic on the left – a sharp contr...

People often suppose or imply that free-market econo- mists constitute a significant portion of all economists. We surveyed American Economic Association members and asked their views on 18 specific forms of government activism. We find that about 8 percent of AEA members can be considered supporters of free-market principles, and that less than 3...

People often suppose or imply that free-market economists constitute a significant portion of all economists. We surveyed American Economic Association members and asked their views on 18 specific forms of government activism. We find that about 8 percent of AEA members can be considered supporters of free-market principles, and that less than 3 pe...

ABSTRACT: In a recent Public Opinion Quarterly article “Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony?,” John Zipp and Rudy Fenwick pit themselves against “right-wing activists and scholars,” citing our scholarship (Klein and Stern 2005a; Klein and Western 2005). Here we analyze Zipp and Fenwick’s characterization of our research and find it faulty in three im...

In Spring 2003, a survey of 1000 economists was conducted using a randomly generated membership list from the American Economics Association. The survey contained questions about 18 policy issues, voting behavior, and several background variables. The response was 264 (nonblank) surveys. The responses show that most economists are supporters of saf...

This paper provides copious results from a 2003 survey of academics. We analyze the responses of 1208 academics from six scholarly associations (in anthropology, economics, history, legal and political philosophy, political science, and sociology) with regard to their views on 18 policy issues. The issues include economic regulations, personal-choi...

Academic social scientists overwhelmingly vote Democratic, and the Democratic hegemony has increased significantly since 1970. Moreover, the policy preferences of a large sample of the members of the scholarly associations in anthropology, economics, history, legal and political philosophy, political science, and sociology generally bear out conjec...

The inclination toward the political left in the American academy has existed as a presumption for decades. Recently, faculty and students, who found themselves marginalized by reason of the party they support or their religious convictions, have been advancing the cause of intellectual diversity. Their appeal would seem compelling, given the missi...

In Spring 2003, a large-scale survey of American academics was conducted using academic association membership lists from six fields: Anthropology, Economics, History, Philosophy (political and legal), Political Science, and Sociology. This paper focuses on one question: To which political party have the candidates you’ve voted for in the past ten...

Within the fields of anthropology and sociology, how do Democrats and Republicans compare in their opinions on issues of economic regulation, personal choice, and the role of government? Using data from a survey of U.S. members of the American Anthropological Association and the American Sociological Association—with 701 respondents—we find that th...

The present status of rational choice sociology in Scandinavia is discussed in the form of a review, examining representative work and highlighting important scholars. Despite a reputation of having a strong Scandinavian rational choice tradition, rational choice sociology is practically non-existent in Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Rational choice...

In analyzing the spatial diffusion of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, this article introduces the notion of a mesolevel network. A mesolevel network is a social network that differs in three important respects from interpersonal microlevel networks directly linking prior and potential adopters of a practice to one another: (1) it is generated...

This paper examines how competition within a movement affects the overall growth of the movement's membership. Using data on the Swedish temperance movement, I test hypotheses from three different theories; the theory of cross pressure, rational choice theory, and organizational ecology. My main finding is that intra-movement competition tends to b...

Social-movement organizations compete with each other as do other organizations. Competition affects their success, and when facing competition, organizations must adjust. Thus, the evolution of social-movement organizations is influenced by other organizations in their environment. To study the dynamics of competition, this paper suggests that org...

In this paper we address the free-rider problem from a network perspective. We suggest that individuals' groups of relevant others are considerably smaller than is usually assumed in the Olsonian tradition. Instead of focusing on the interest group as a whole, we argue that a group of relevant others consists of those to whom the individual is tied...