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This study investigates how federal and state-level laws designed to reduce workplace sexual harassment relate to the content of sexual harassment training programs in a sample of private U.S. companies. To gauge the effect of the law on the regulation of sexual harassment, we draw on unique data containing information on federal and state-level legal environments, formal discrimination charges filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and establishment-level sexual harassment training initiatives. State-level legal regulation of sexual harassment at work is linked to more elaborate sexual harassment training programs, even when federal legal regulations are not. Our findings underscore the importance of state-level legal regimes in the workplace regulation of gender-based rights and provide an example for future studies of work inequality and the law.

Despite the absence of federal legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression, many companies have adopted such policies in recent years. We examine the impact of several contextual factors thought to influence gender identity and expression nondiscrimination policy adoption among Fortune 500 firms from 1997 to 2007. Our findings suggest that city and state laws likely influence policy adoption, as do federal case rulings regarding gender nonconformity and the adoption of similar policies by companies in the same industry. We found little evidence that companies respond to state or city executive orders or to media coverage of gender identity issues in the workplace.

Dina Banerjee is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Purdue Center for Faculty Success at Purdue University. She graduated with her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2009. Her areas of specialization are gender, work and occupation; development and social change; transnational feminism and globalization; and sociology of developing nations. In her doctoral dissertation she examined the effects of sex-segregation and racial/ethnic segregation on the job-related well being of women workers in the United States. She is the coauthor (with C. C. Perrucci) of “Race, Work Experiences and Perceived Promotional Opportunity,” published in the International Journal of Contemporary Sociology. Dr Banerjee is also associated with the Women's Studies Program at Purdue University. Before coming to the United States as a graduate student, she worked as a lecturer in the University of Calcutta (Kolkata, India).

The chapters in this volume are the fruit of a feminist revolution in sociology that transformed conventional ways of thinking about work in the 1990s. Prior to the feminist revolution, the most important sociological theories that accounted for gender inequality in the workplace were human capital theories and socialization theories, both of which blamed women workers for their lower status and pay in the workplace (Schilt, 2010; Williams, 1995). Human capital theories argue that men and women receive different pay-offs from employment because they invest differently in their careers (Padavic & Reskin, 2002; Blau, Ferber, & Winkler, 1998; Polachek, 1981). Men seek higher education, skills training, and overtime at work because they are family breadwinners whose major responsibility is to support their wives and dependent children. Meanwhile, women invest less in the human capital valued by workplaces because their primary commitment is to their families. This theory assumes the heterosexual nuclear family, which is no longer the typical family form (Coontz, 1997). This rational choice perspective also fails to explain recent trends in women's educational attainment and labor force participation rates, now estimated to be equal to if not greater than men's (England, 2010).

Discrimination against workers because of their family responsibilities can violate federal law, yet scholars know little about the context surrounding perceived family responsibilities discrimination (FRD). This chapter investigates both the types of caregiving responsibilities that put workers at risk of FRD and the organizational contexts that give rise to perceived FRD.

We identify features of FRD which make detecting it particularly difficult and theorize the mechanisms by which caregiving responsibilities and organizational contexts lead to perceived FRD. We draw on data from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce for our empirical analysis.

Caregivers who provide both child and eldercare are more likely to perceive FRD than caregivers who provide one type of care, as are people who experience high levels of family-to-work interference and who spend more daily time on childcare. Certain family-friendly and meritocratic organizational contexts are associated with lower perceived FRD.

We measure perceptions, not actual discrimination on the basis of family care responsibilities. Our research cannot pinpoint the factors which intensify or lessen actual discrimination, just perceptions of it.

By pinpointing the characteristics of organizations in which perceived FRD occurs, this chapter shows how organizations can create workplaces in which perceived FRD is less likely.

In elite professional firms, minorities are actively recruited but struggle to move upward. The authors argue that initiatives aimed at general skill development can have unintended consequences for firm diversity. Specifically, the authors contend that approaches that win partner support through motivational significance and interpretive clarity provide a more effective avenue to skill development for minorities, who have less access than White peers to informal developmental opportunities. The authors also argue that a longer “partnership track,” which imposes a time limit on skill development, will benefit minority professionals. Using data on 601 offices of large US law firms in 1996 and 2005, the authors investigate the effects of five developmental initiatives and partnership track length on the representation of African-Americans, Latinxs, and Asian-Americans among partners. Observed effects are consistent with expectations, but patterns vary across racial-ethnic groups.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy. It provides an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts. The selected bibliography is useful to efficiently keep up with trends in library instruction for busy practitioners, library science students and those wishing to learn about information literacy in other contexts.

This article annotates 424 English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, theses and reports on library instruction and information literacy published in 2021. The sources were selected from the EBSCO platform for Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and WorldCat, published in 2021 that included the terms “information literacy,” “library instruction,” or “information fluency” in the title, abstract or keywords. The sources were organized in Zotero. Annotations summarize the source, focusing on the findings or implications. Each source was categorized into one of seven pre-determined categories: K-12 Education, Children and Adolescents; Academic and Professional Programs; Everyday Life, Community, and the Workplace; Libraries and Health Information Literacy; Multiple Library Types; and Other Information Literacy Research and Theory.

The paper provides a brief description of 424 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy within 2021.