About the Author
Biographical Sketch
Pamela Stone is Professor of Sociology, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. She received her BA with honors from Duke University and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University, both in Sociology. Her research centers around issues related to women in the workforce, with a focus on work and family, careers and occupations, sex segregation, pay discrimination, and gender equity. Her research has been published in scholarly journals and monographs and supported by grants from a variety of sources including the National Science Foundation, other federal agencies, and foundations. She teaches courses in statistics and research methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels and population dynamics, as well as honors seminars and special courses on topics dealing with her research area (most recently the course "Work and Family"). Professor Stone was previously Director of the Department's Master's Program in Social Research and Department Chair from 1987-1998. A recipient of a CUNY Scholar Incentive Award, she was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, during 1998-2000 and on leave there for the 2000-2001 academic year.
Stone just completed an in-depth study of working mothers who have left their careers in high-level professional jobs to become full-time, at-home mothers. This research, supported by the Sloan Foundation, is the basis of her book entitled Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home (University of California Press, 2007). The book explores why and how women came to make this important decision, the factors influencing it, and its implications for the women themselves, their families, and their communities as well as for women's status. Preliminary results focused on the decision to stay home were published in the November, 2004, special issue of Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in an article with Meg Lovejoy entitled in "Fast-Track Women and the 'Choice' to Stay Home." Professor Stone has discussed this research on TV and radio programs including the Today show on NBC and The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric as well as programs aired on CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets and has been quoted in a number of magazines and newspapers, including Time.
With Arielle Kuperberg (a Hunter College honors graduate who is now pursuing a PhD in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania), Professor Stone compared and contrasted two major policies for achieving wage justice, pay equity and living wage reforms, via a simulation of their application. This research is reported in an article entitled "Anti-Discrimination vs. Anti-Poverty? A Comparison of Pay Equity and Living Wage Reforms,” which was published simultaneously in 2006 in Journal of Women, Politics & Policy and in Women, Work, and Poverty (Haworth) edited by Heidi Hartmann.