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Entrevista al Dr. Jerry Jacobs

In the interview below, in-cites talks with Dr. Jerry Jacobs about his highly cited work in the field of Social Sciences. According to Essential Science Indicators , his record in this field includes 14 papers cited a total of 145 times to date. His most-cited paper is the 2001 Work and Occupations paper, "Overworked individuals or overworked families? Explaining trends in work, leisure, and family time," (Jacobs JA and Gerson K, Work Occupation 28[1]: 40-63, February 2001), with 40 cites to date. Dr. Jacobs is the Merriam Term Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Would you give us some background on your education and early research?

I received my Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard in 1983, and have been teaching at the University of Pennsylvania ever since.
I also served as President of the Eastern Sociological Society in 2003 and am in the last year of a three-year term as editor of the American Sociological Review.
I have written extensively on opportunities for working women over the last two decades. My research has addressed a number of aspects of women's employment, including authority, earnings, working conditions, part-time work, and entry into male-dominated occupations.
I have authored three books, Revolving Doors: Sex Segregation and Women’s Careers (Stanford University Press, 1989), Gender Inequality at Work (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1995), and The Time Divide: Work, Family and Gender Inequality, with Kathleen Gerson (Harvard University Press, 2004)—which is now available in paperback. My current research projects include a study of women’s entry into the medical profession, funded by the Macy Foundation, and a study of working time and work-family conflict among university faculty.

What do you consider the main thrust of your research?

I have studied various aspects of women’s career opportunities. The central theme has been trying to assess the changes in women’s roles—and especially women’s employment opportunities—that we have witnessed over the last few decades.

Several of your papers deal with the conflict between work and family time. What trends have you discovered, and are things moving in a positive or negative direction?

One key point in this line of research has been that there are disparate trends for different groups in our society. Busy professionals have experienced a speed-up: they are working longer work-weeks than was the case a generation ago. Many also face increased productivity pressures on the job as well as heightened expectations for contributing to family life at home. This research also focuses on busy families, not just busy individuals.
In the recent book, The Time Divide (Harvard University Press, 2004), Kathleen Gerson and I suggest that working 50 hours per week means one thing if you have a stay-at-home spouse and another thing if your spouse also works 50 hours per week. Thus, work-family pressures are best understood in the context of the family economy rather than from the point of view of the individual.

How does the US compare with other industrialized countries on gender issues and work vs. leisure time?

The busiest Americans are busier than their European counterparts. A much greater fraction of Americans work more than 50 hours per week, and more American couples put in 100 plus hours per week compared with their European counterparts.
If you are free to talk about it, please tell us about your current projects.
I am currently working on a book about women physicians in the United States, and a paper on couples where both partners work in the same occupation.

Jerry A. Jacobs, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA, USA