Leslie McCall

Associate Professor of Sociology
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University
Ph.D., Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995
l-mccall@northwestern.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Additional biographical information

Downloadable Research Papers

Leslie McCall’s areas of interest include social inequality, economic and political sociology, methods, and social theory. Her work on class inequality among women in the United States, and more generally, on how racial, educational, and gender inequality variously overlap and conflict with one other, has been published in a wide range of journals as well as in her book, Complex Inequality: Gender, Class, and Race in the New Economy (Routledge, 2001), which was the first runner-up for the C. Wright Mills Book Award.

Her current research includes: an ongoing study of rising economic inequality among women; an analysis of the impact of corporate restructuring (e.g., downsizing, subcontracting) on rising earnings inequality; and an investigation of the political consequences of rising inequality, in terms of awareness of and opposition to inequality, preferences for redistributive policies, and political participation. McCall also maintains an interest in feminist social theory and methodology, in particular the conceptualization and empirical analysis of multiple dimensions of social relations from a social science perspective.

Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Demos: A Network of Ideas and Action, where she is a senior fellow.

Current Research

Class and Gender. Although levels of and increases in earnings inequality are comparable among women and men, much less attention is being paid to inequality among women than to inequality among men or inequality between men and women. In this project, growing earnings inequality among women serves as the primary analytic lens through which to examine overlapping and conflicting shifts in class and gender inequality over the past several decades. McCall looks at both gender differences in class inequality and class differences in gender inequality. She also considers how a joint gender and class analysis illuminates important social policy issues, such as the crisis in the provision of “care” labor in education, healthcare, and child care.

Corporate Restructuring and Rising Inequality. Many suspect that corporate restructuring has led to rising earnings inequality. Yet it is very difficult to measure this effect empirically because of the lack of large-scale data on both organizations and earnings within those organizations. This project explores several different ways to address this issue. McCall is currently examining the impact of two familiar aspects of corporate restructuring on levels and changes in earnings inequality: downsizing (i.e., establishment size and establishment size changes) and domestic subcontracting and outsourcing (i.e., temp work, producer services, etc.). This analysis focuses on changes in urban U.S. labor markets from 1970 to 2000.

The Politics of the New Inequality. Despite considerable interest in the issue of rising inequality among scholars and advocates, there is little evidence that the issue holds much interest among the general public or the media, or has had any impact on preferences for policies that reduce inequality. Are these perceptions accurate? In this project, she examines questions from a wide range of surveys to determine the extent of awareness of inequality; whether such awareness, if it exists, translates into a particular set of policy preferences; and whether attitudes towards inequality and policy preferences vary across countries, with Lane Kenworthy of the University of Arizona. She also examines media coverage of the issue and its role in shaping attitudes towards inequality.

Selected Publications

Books

Complex Inequality: Gender, Class, and Race in the New Economy. 2001. New York: Routledge.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

McCall, L. 2005. “The complexity of intersectionality.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30(3): 1771-800. To be translated and reprinted in The Swedish Journal of Gender Studies.

McCall, L. 2001. “Sources of racial wage inequality in metropolitan labor markets: Racial, ethnic, and gender differences.” American Sociological Review 66(4): 520-542.

McCall, L. 2001. “Explaining levels of within-group wage inequality in U.S. labor markets.” Demography 37(4): 415-430.

McCall, L. 2000. “Gender and the new inequality: Explaining the college/non-college wage gap in U.S. labor markets.” American Sociological Review 65(2): 234-255.

McCall, L. 1998. “Spatial routes to gender wage (in)equality: Regional restructuring and wage differentials by gender and education.” Economic Geography 74(4): 379-404.

Book Chapters, Edited Volumes

McCall, L. 2008. "What does class inequality among women look like? A comparison with men and families, 1970-2000." In Social Class: How Does it Work?, ed. Annette Lareau and Dalton Conley. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

McCall, L. 2007. “Increasing class disparities among women and the politics of gender equity.” In The Sex of Class: Women and America’s Labor Movement, ed. D. S. Cobble. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

McCall, L., and A. S. Orloff. 2005. “Gender, class, and capitalism.” Special Issue of Social Politics 12(3).

McCall, L. 2005. “Gender, race, and the restructuring of work: Organizational and institutional perspectives.” In The Oxford Handbook of Work and Organization, ed. P. Tolbert, R. Batt, S. Ackroyd, and P. Thompson, 74-94. New York: Oxford University Press.

Reports and Short Articles

McCall, L. “What do Americans think about inequality?” Demos working paper.

McCall, L. “The inequality economy: How new corporate practices redistribute income to the top.” Demos working paper.