How Privilege & the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America

The Tolls of Uncertainty: How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America

Professor Sarah Damske,
Professor of Sociology, Labor and Employment Relations, and Women’s Studies at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU)

Friday, October 7, 2022
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

SSC 6210

Professor Damaske offers a startling look at the nation’s unemployment system—who it helps, who it hurts, and what, if anything, we can do to make it fair. Drawing on interviews with one hundred men and women who have lost jobs across Pennsylvania. She examines the ways unemployment shapes families, finances, health, and the job hunt. Damaske demonstrates that commonly held views of unemployment are either incomplete or just plain wrong. Shaped by a person’s gender and class, unemployment generates new inequalities that cast uncertainties on the search for work and on life chances beyond the world of work, threatening opportunity in America.

Professor Sarah Damske is a Professor of Sociology, Labor and Employment Relations, and Women’s Studies at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU). Her research expertise in work, unemployment, gender, family, and health across the life course makes her uniquely well qualified to direct, with Dr. Adrianne Frech, a study on changing employment contexts, longitudinal work patterns, and gendered health disparities for two cohorts. Throughout her career, Professor Damaske has built teams of collaborators across disciplines and institutions to investigate the relationships between work, family, gender, and health across the life course.