China’s recent gender history is marked by periodic ruptures, with the transition from socialist feminism to market economy accompanied by major paradigm shifts in public discourse on gender roles and status, femininity, and masculinity. This dissertation explores how this shifting gender structure, intertwined with the continuous influence of Confucian family values, economic development, market transition, and educational expansion, manifests in individual-level gender beliefs in contemporary China. Applying a multidimensional conceptualization of gender ideology, it identifies different nationally relevant gender principles and examines their sociodemographic predictors, regional distributions, and covariation across generations of Chinese men and women who came of age during different socioeconomic and political eras. The study explores which aspects of gender-traditionalism endure and why, as well as which forms of gender-egalitarianism take hold during China’s socioeconomic transformations. The mixed-methods research design applied combines latent class analysis and multilevel regression analysis of nationally representative survey data from the Chinese General Social Survey (2010-2017) with analysis of 79 original in-depth interviews conducted with diverse populations in China. This methodology allows for a more comprehensive understanding of China’s gender ideologies and attention to intersectional identities shaped by political generation, geographic origins (e.g., urban vs. rural), and gender. Key findings reveal a multifaceted and contextually rooted structure to Chinese gender ideology. The coexistence of male-supremacist values and essentialist beliefs about women’s domestic roles, along with an expectation for women’s paid employment—despite their continued subordination—is consistent with the multidimensional nature of gender beliefs observed in other countries. However, the ways in which these gender principles rise and fall, couple and decouple, are distinct in China, influenced by the country’s unique economic, cultural, and political landscapes. The observed multidimensionality in gender beliefs and their variation across social groups and regions also confirm that market transition is not necessarily accompanied by a uniform liberalization of gender beliefs. Survey results indicate a two-phased evolution of gender beliefs during China’s market transition: initially, traditional gender norms intensified, reflecting a “traditionalizing effect,” but over time, as the market economy matured, there was a shift towards more liberal egalitarian beliefs. Nonetheless, the pervasive market-driven values in contemporary China exacerbate a “double-bind” Chinese women face, torn between paid work and primary caregiving, which naturalizes workplace gender inequalities. Lastly, the dissertation connects evolving gender beliefs with family dynamics, highlighting potential influences on China’s declining fertility rate and proposing policy recommendations. Altogether, these findings underscore the need to interrogate common narratives about the connection between gender equality and modernization, particularly in societies undergoing rapid socioeconomic transformations. They also illuminate how deeply entrenched gender norms can be recast in changing societal contexts, resulting in novel forms of gender inequality.

Research and policy efforts to increase the racial diversity of STEM fields have focused on how to prime the educational pipeline through interventions in schools and universities. This thesis focuses on recent college graduates who have successfully cleared a key hurdle and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. I use original survey data from three public universities across Texas to determine whether there are differences in first job outcomes between Hispanic and non-Hispanic computer scientists on the elite tech labor market. I find that university attended is the most consistent predictor of labor market success. Differences between Hispanics and non-Hispanics in job outcomes are mostly attributable to the concentration of Hispanic computer science degree holders in a non-elite, geographically peripheral university. Controlling for university attended, Hispanics are as likely to work in a prestige tech hub and in a core software job as their white and Asian peers; however, they earn lower wages. In addition, results suggest a positive association between geographic mobility, higher earnings, and the likelihood of working in desirable, degree-related jobs. Results suggest that a closer inspection of segregational mechanisms at the post-secondary level is needed to fully understand its effects on elite job opportunities. Although a degree in computer science can provide a ticket to one of the most lucrative occupational fields in Texas, racial stratification within this field occurs early in the career and likely translates into long-lasting socioeconomic inequalities.

LGBT policies governing hate crimes, discrimination, adoption, conversion therapy, health care, restroom access, and gender identity documentation all differ by state. In order to better understand this geographic disparity, this thesis explores variability in attitudes toward gay men and lesbians within the United States. Employing 1984-2016 American National Election Studies (ANES) data, I assess the power of state-level economic, social, cultural, and political factors to explain attitudinal differences across US states. Results show that the educational attainment of a state’s population is the most robust macro-level predictor of individual attitudes toward homosexuality. An increasing percentage of college graduates leads to generally more positive attitudes across the state, even among those who are not themselves college educated. Other contextual level variables, such as economic development, religious fundamentalism, or political and legal conditions, do not explain the association between population level educational attainment and attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. Understanding what explains regional differences in attitudes can help social scientists and policy makers mitigate disparities in outcomes for and treatment of sexual minorities.

This dissertation examines Asian American tech workers as racialized and intersectional subjects within the high-tech industry. Although STEM fields and occupations are often considered Asian-concentrated domains, Asian immigrant and Asian American workers are rarely studied as workers who are impacted by racial discrimination or have strategies to mitigate potential racism. Through interviews with 59 Asian American tech workers, this research expands on and questions our current theoretical understanding of race, gender, and organizations for Asian American workers. First, I establish the ways in which Asian American tech workers discount anti-Asian discriminations in the workplace and offer a new theoretical framework, racial strategies, to understand how they mitigate or address racism. I find that Asian American tech workers employ four racial strategies to deflect or confront racism in the workplace. Three of the strategies: racial maneuvering, essentializing, and distancing intentionally discount the role of race and racism within Asian Americans’ professional lives. A fourth racial strategy, dissenting, acknowledges racism, but those who use this strategy are often so frustrated by the white-dominated racial organizations they work for that they leave mainstream organizations altogether. Next, I ask how competing gender and racial identities among Asian American women are realized in tech culture. I find that academic institutions, recruitment processes, and professional diversity initiatives reinforce the rhetoric that gender inequality is the highest priority inequality to address and that is the most directly relevant inequality to Asian American women tech workers’ experiences. Racial inequality, on the other hand, is an inequality reserved for “other” racial minorities and does not, for the most part, affect the professional careers of Asian American tech workers. As a result, Asian American women develop a strong gender and a weak racial identity. In the last empirical chapter, I explore Asian American tech workers’ boundaries for racial group membership and its perceived benefits. I demonstrate that Asian Americans are active participants in their group-making process, that they apply strict requirements to prevent Asian immigrant workers from receiving membership, and that they police the behaviors of other Asian American tech workers in order to remain in good racial standing within high-tech organizations. These intentional choices reinforce racial stereotypes of Asian American as “honorary whites” and Model Minorities by ensuring their behaviors align with stereotypical work ethic and technical competencies. By studying and theorizing about Asian Americans as racial subjects in occupations, I demonstrate how an upwardly mobile and “successful” racial minority is nevertheless shaped by racism.

Today, more than three-quarters of internet users in the United States read blogs. One type of blog is healthy food blogs which provide readers with recipes and diet, lifestyle, and health advice, generating profit through advertising and page visits. Additionally, eight in ten Americans look to the internet for health advice. Given the massive reach of blogs and ubiquitous use of the internet for advice on health, healthy food blogs must be considered a significant source of health, diet, and lifestyle advice. Scholars have paid scant attention to the messages on these blogs and their implications. In examining over 200 popular healthy food blogs, I find that these blogs disseminate messages about food, health, and diet to their audiences using a self-help framework, which treats “life as a work of health.” Viewing healthy food blogs through a self-help paradigm helps illuminate how healthy food blogs individualize and moralize messages about health.Overall, I argue that the messages on healthy food blogs collectively support an individual-centered self-help narrative which I call “life as a work of health”. The underlying messages and assumptions in this narrative holds that 1) thinness and healthy eating are individual choices, 2) chronic disease and poor health are individual problems addressed by healthy eating, and 3) happiness is a result of a thin, fit body. The first key contribution of this dissertation is a reconceptualization of healthy food blogs as digital extensions of the self-help literature that contribute to the framing of health in popular American discourse. This framing process is evident in my analysis of weight loss food blogs. I trace the presence and adoption of the “hero’s journey” in the healthy journey narratives of weight loss food bloggers as a form of self-help discourse that perpetuates an individualized and moralized approach to understanding food and health. In short, I argue that healthy food blog messaging places responsibility for weight and body size on individual people instead of on structural health inequalities, and it promises happiness as the ultimate reward for thin, healthy bodies. Individualizing issues related to health and body size may encourage dangerous or unsustainable eating habits while perpetuating fat phobia. Chronic illness healthy food blogs also present a concerning narrative, which begins with the failure of Western medicine, and requires chronically ill persons take control of their own health through diet and lifestyle change. While well-meaning and empowering for individual bloggers, messages on chronic illness food blogs play into the idea that one can overcome illness outside of traditional medical paradigms and may be risky for people suffering from treatable medical conditions. This poses a significant challenge to public health policy and personal understandings of health and illness. Although different in content, weight loss and chronic illness blogs share an individualistic approach, while ignoring structural health inequalities related to race, gender, and class. Popular healthy food bloggers not only disseminate healthy eating and lifestyle advice, but also comment on public social events. I examine how they frame two mass events - the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020 and George Floyd’s murder and Black Lives Matter protesting in May and June of 2020. Though these events do not concern food, the messages these bloggers post about these events are significant given the trust shown by their followers. I find that these highly politicized collective events are also approached from a self-help perspective, by centering the experiences of food bloggers who are overwhelmingly white, middle-class, and financially secure. By implicitly undermining more complex structural understandings of social problems, healthy food bloggers divert focus from collective structural approaches to public health and safety.

Sexual and gender minorities (SGM), a population which includes persons who consider themselves lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+), were formally designated a “health disparity population” by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2016 (Pérez-Stable 2016). In order to better understand what explains SGM health disparities and how we may better achieve health equity, I examine three aspects of SGM health and wellbeing in closer detail: 1) the effect of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion on HIV viral suppression and HIV diagnoses, 2) the relationship of structural stigma (anti-transgender state policies) with transgender mental and physical health, and 3) the social determinants of transgender community connectedness and gender identity pride.The first empirical chapter of this dissertation employs data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess how the differential state-level implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion impacts HIV viral suppression and HIV diagnoses outcomes among White, Black, and Latinx individuals and gay, bisexual, and other cisgender men who have sex with men (GBMSM). I find a reduction in HIV diagnoses among Latinx individuals in the Medicaid expansion states, but no effect on White or Black individuals or GBMSM. Despite some reduction, substantial health disparities remain in the post-expansion period, as White Americans continue to have the highest viral suppression and lowest diagnosis rate compared to Black and Latinx Americans. The second empirical chapter uses the first national probability sample of transgender adults (TransPop) to evaluate the relationship between structural stigma and transgender mental and physical health. After linking respondents’ state of residence with transgender-related policies in that state, I find that, on average, transgender respondents fare worse on mental and physical health outcomes compared to their cisgender peers without taking into account structural stigma. In addition, I find that greater exposure to structural stigma (i.e., more anti-transgender policies in respondents’ state of residence) has a significant association with poorer mental health outcomes for transgender individuals only. The third empirical chapter continues to use the TransPop data to focus on the social determinants of two resilience factors, transgender community connectedness (TCC) and gender identity pride. I find that 1) variation in gender identity and socioeconomic status within the transgender community is linked with differences in resilience; 2) therapy is strongly linked to both higher TCC and pride; and 3) childhood bullying is linked to lower gender identity pride as an adult. Building on the work of others who call on researchers to expand their focus from only disparities and negative outcomes (e.g., Colpitts and Gahagan 2016), I argue that TCC and pride are not only valuable as resilience factors, but as measures of transgender wellbeing, or what may be called “trans joy” or “gender euphoria” (Beischel, Gauvin, and van Anders 2022; shuster and Westbrook 2022).

The United States lags behind most other nations in the world with respect to job-protected leave and paid leave from work, such as parental leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 is the only federal leave policy, and it provides 12 weeks of job-protected leave for personal care or family care to address serious illnesses or health conditions. However, leave under the FMLA is unpaid, and restrictive eligibility requirements prohibit over 40 percent of the workforce from taking advantage of its provisions. Given the FMLA’s shortcomings, states have passed their own leave laws, offering paid leave, covering more workers, lengthening leave durations, or expanding definitions of “family” for the purposes of family caregiving leave. My dissertation applies both quantitative and qualitative analytical approaches to explore relationships between social movements and gender-neutral leave legislation (i.e., paid and/or job-protected family, parental, and sick leave) in U.S. states. It addresses two key questions: First, how and to what extent do union-community coalitions (or social movements) influence state leave legislation? Second, under what conditions do they have influence?

This is the first study to compile state leave legislative histories since the passage of the FMLA in 1993 and the first to empirically test relationships between organized labor and leave policy. My mixed-method approach combines an event history analysis of leave policy adoption in 49 states from 1973 to 2014 with in-depth, case-oriented comparisons between two U.S. states characterized by above-average union densities but very different leave policy provisions: California, which has the most generous leave policies in the country and Pennsylvania, which has no state-level leave provisions. Findings from the case-oriented comparisons are based on state legislative hearing transcripts, news sources, and interviews with 34 union, community, and coalition leaders as well as government staff and elected representatives. For the event history analysis, I constructed my own dataset, organized by state-year, drawing from different government and academic sources to measure union institutional strength and economic and political conditions in each state for each year. Combining these two methodological approaches enabled a comprehensive examination of social movement interventions at different points in the policy-making process: setting legislative agendas, shaping the content of legislation, and achieving policy adoption.

I find that movement activity, union institutional strength, and government allies in the form of Democrats and women in state legislatures facilitated adoption of leave policies. However, under favorable movement and political conditions, weak economic conditions intervened to slow the progress of leave bills. Social movements (or union-community coalitions) exerted most influence at the agenda-setting stage of the policy-making process. While some elected representatives introduced bills independent of movement pressures, these bills only emerged from house committees with attention from movement actors. At the other end of the policy-making process, I find that Democratic majorities in state houses were necessary for a bill to come to a vote and ultimately to pass. At the stage in which the content of legislation is negotiated, an intermediate stage in the policy-making process, I find interaction between movements and political conditions. At this intermediate stage, movement actors are consulted about what they perceive as reasonable compromises, and these potential compromises are weighed against a desire to win support from moderate legislators, which would potentially enable policy adoption.

My research contributes to existing theoretical knowledge regarding social movement outcomes and union contributions to equality. First, I extend social movement theories by arguing that social movements and political conditions interact at the stage in which legislative content is negotiated. My findings confirm previous research showing that social movements have most influence at the early stages in the policy-making process (e.g., bill introduction) rather than later stages (e.g., policy adoption). Political conditions mediate relationships between movements and policy outcomes at the policy adoption stage in the sense that Democratic control of the legislature is a necessary condition for passage of leave legislation. When Democrats are in control, union strength and union-community coalition activity increases the likelihood of policy adoption. At the intermediate stage in which legislative content is negotiated, social movements and political conditions interact to have joint effects on policy outcomes. Second, I introduce the economy as an additional mediator in the relationship between movements and policy outcomes and argue that social movement theories, rather than continuing with political mediation models, should move toward a more generic mediation model of movement outcomes. Finally, I find a significant, positive relationship between union institutional strength and leave policy adoption. Additionally, specify union contributions to coalitions advocating policy change, arguing that unions contribute their relationships with policy-makers and localized knowledge of political conditions. These contributions, I argue, are unique to organized labor. Unions, therefore, facilitate the movement’s access to government decision-makers, an achievement that social movement scholars consider a movement outcome in its own right.