Kathleen Gerson


Kathleen Gerson is an American sociologist and Collegiate Professor of Arts and Science at New York University. She is known for her in-depth research, often based on qualitative interviews that explore the intersections of gender, work, and family life in modern economies, including how individuals navigate unfolding changes in gender dynamics, work–family conflict, and contemporary employment and caregiving institutions.
Recent work addresses work–caregiving tensions in the 21st century economy, including a forthcoming book tentatively titled Colliding Worlds: Managing the Clash Between Earning and Caregiving in an Era of Insecurity. Gerson's research emphasizes how these dynamics unfold through time amid globalizing social and economic forces, with comparative insights from collaborations within the United States and other national contexts, such as a United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation grant on equality at work. Her work has over 13,000 citations.

Education and career

Gerson earned her B.A. magna cum laude in sociology from Stanford University in 1969, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her M.A. in 1974 and Ph.D. in 1981 from the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, with a thesis on "Hard Choices: How Women Decide About Work, Career, and Motherhood," advised by Harold L. Wilensky, Arlie Russell Hochschild, and Claude S. Fischer.
Early in her career, Gerson worked as a research assistant at UC Berkeley's Survey Research Center and Institute of Industrial Relations and as a research specialist at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development. In 1979, she was an instructor in Stanford's Program on Urban Studies.
She joined New York University's Department of Sociology as an assistant professor in 1980, advancing to associate professor in 1988, full professor in 1995, and Collegiate Professor of Arts and Science in 2010. She served as director of undergraduate studies and chair of the department.
Gerson has held visiting fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the Center for the Study of Status Passages and Risks in the Life Course at the University of Bremen, and the Russell Sage Foundation.
She has served in leadership roles including vice president of the American Sociological Association, co-president of Sociologists for Women in Society, president of the Eastern Sociological Society, and chair of the ASA Family Section. She was elected to the Sociological Research Association in 2004 and its executive committee in 2024. Gerson is a founding board member of the Work and Family Researchers Network and a past board member of the Council on Contemporary Families.
Among her invited addresses and lectures are keynotes at NYU's Phi Beta Kappa Induction Ceremony, Bar Ilan University’s conference on Involved Fatherhood and the Work-Family Interface, Alpha Kappa Delta’s Distinguished Lecture, the University of Edinburgh’s International Conference on Unequal Families and Relationships, the Israeli Sociological Society’s annual meeting, the Norwegian Institute for Social Research conference on Reconciling Work and Family in Europe and the US, the College and University Work/Family Association annual conference, Colby College’s Kingsley Birge Endowed Lecture, and the University of Cincinnati’s Charles Phelps Taft Annual Lecture.

Research

Gerson's research uses in-depth interviewing and quantitative analysis to examine how national and local contexts, including economic and social policy shifts, shape personal decisions about work, parenting, and relationships. In turn, shifts in personal decisions and individual strategies reshape the larger contours of social change. She has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation.
Her early work focused on women's employment and childbearing decisions amid rising labor force participation. Hard Choices analyzed interviews showing women's choices as strategic responses to opportunities and partnership fragilities, rather than innate traits. It was a finalist for the ASA's William J. Goode Book Award and the Society for the Study of Social Problems' C. Wright Mills Award. The book has been cited over 1,600 times.
No Man's Land explored men's diverse and often polarized responses to gender shifts, as some men resist and others embrace changes in their employment commitments and family involvement. It was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. It has garnered more than 1,000 citations.
With Jerry A. Jacobs, The Time Divide used census and survey data to document how time polarization exacerbates gender inequality and to recommend policy reforms to reduce inequality and enhance work-family balance and integration. It received honorable mention for the Mirra Komarovsky Book Award and was named a "Best Business Book" by Strategy+Business. Contemporary Sociology listed it among the 12 most influential books of the decade on family change. The book has over 2,100 citations.
The Unfinished Revolution, based on interviews with a diverse group of young adults, revealed a gap between emerging shared ideals for egalitarian partnerships and contrasting "fallback" strategies due to institutional barriers. These barriers prompt women to emphasize self-reliance and men to fall back on neo-traditional aspirations that emphasize their position as the primary breadwinner. It won the ASA Family Section's William J. Goode Distinguished Book Award. It has been cited more than 850 times.
Gerson co-authored The Science and Art of Interviewing with Sarah Damaske, a methodological guide that delineates the unique contributions of depth interviewing and provides a step-by-step overview. It has received nearly 300 citations. Recent projects include a study that conducted national interviews to understand how COVID-19 shaped the experiences of Americans with caregiving responsibilities and the forthcoming book described above. Her work informs policy on gender equity.
Gerson's research incorporates cross-national comparisons, such as analyses of gender strategies in post-industrial societies and international collaborations on work equality.

Awards and honors

  • Top Scholar, ScholarGPS, 2024
  • Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 2017
  • Distinguished Career Award, ASA Family Section, 2017
  • Top 25 Work-Family Scholars Worldwide, Google Scholar Metrics, 2017
  • Jessie Bernard Award, American Sociological Association, 2013
  • Distinguished Merit Award, Eastern Sociological Society, 2014
  • William J. Goode Distinguished Book Award, ASA Family Section, 2012
  • Top Ten Extraordinary Contributor to Work and Family Research, Work and Family Researchers Network, 2018
  • Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research, 2003
  • Distinguished Feminist Lecturer, Sociologists for Women in Society, 1998
  • Elected to Sociological Research Association, 2004

Selected publications

Books

  • Gerson, Kathleen; Damaske, Sarah A.. The Science and Art of Interviewing. Oxford University Press...
  • Gerson, Kathleen. The Unfinished Revolution: Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work, and Family. Oxford University Press...
  • Jacobs, Jerry A.; Gerson, Kathleen. The Time Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality. Harvard University Press..
  • Gerson, Kathleen. No Man's Land: Men's Changing Commitments to Family and Work. Basic Books..
  • Gerson, Kathleen. Hard Choices: How Women Decide About Work, Career, and Motherhood. University of California Press...

Selected journal articles

  • Jacobs, Jerry A.; Gerson, Kathleen. "Overworked Individuals or Overworked Families? Explaining Trends in Work, Leisure, and Family Time". Work and Occupations. 28 : 40–63..
  • Gerson, Kathleen. "Moral Dilemmas, Moral Strategies, and the Transformation of Gender: Lessons from Two Generations of Work and Family Change". Gender & Society. 16 : 8–28..
  • Gerson, Kathleen. "The Unfinished Revolution: How a New Generation is Reshaping Family, Work, and Gender in America". Sociological Forum. 26 : 671–675..
  • Dunatchik, Allison; Gerson, Kathleen; Glass, Jennifer; Jacobs, Jerry A.. "Gender, Parenting, and The Rise of Remote Work During the Pandemic: Implications for Domestic Inequality in the United States". Gender & Society. 36 : 71–101..
  • Gerson, Kathleen. "Why No One Can 'Have It All' and Why That Matters to Everyone". Sociological Forum. 38 : 1–22..