Feminist scholarship on the relative importance of working-class institutional strength in the economy and in the state has led to two divergent conclusions. Radical feminists argue that working-class institutions dominated by men produce male-biased outcomes; socialist feminists hold that working-class institutions promote classwide interests that benefit women as well as men. This article addresses this debate by applying generic and gendered working-class strength models of the welfare state in an examination of women's public pension quality. Quality is measured as women's (...) average pension compared with that of men, relative to women's average earnings, and compared with the average wage in the society. The authors find support for the socialist feminist view. Working-class institutions, having historically organized and represented the interests of working men, benefit women by improving the security and adequacy of their retirement incomes, but it is women's access to working-class economic and political institutions that brings greater economic equality with men in old age. (shrink)

Our study highlights specific ways in which race and gender create inequality in the workplace. Using in-depth interviews with 67 biology PhD students, we show how engagement with research and service varies by both gender and race. By considering the intersection between gender and race, we find not only that women biology graduate students do more service than men, but also that racial and ethnic minority men do more service than white men. White men benefit from a combination of racial (...) and gender privilege, which places them in the most advantaged position with respect to protected research time and opportunities to build collaborations and networks beyond their labs. Racial/ethnic minority women emerge as uniquely disadvantaged in terms of their experiences relative to other groups. These findings illuminate how gendered organizations are also racialized, producing distinct experiences for women and men from different racial groups, and thus contribute to theorizing the intersectional nature of inequality in the workplace. (shrink)