Skip to main content

Jessica Calarco

Pronouns: she/her
Journalists: Please use these pronouns when appropriate.

Expert on inequalities in family life, education, and health decision-making, with a focus on how institutions and policies amplify inequalities in these domains.

Associate Professor, sociology College of Letters and Science — Home and cell phones available upon request jcalarco@wisc.edu Home page Twitter: @@JessicaCalarco

Topics

  • Why hasn't the U.S. built an adequate social safety net? Because exploiting women's unpaid and underpaid labor maintains the illusion we don't need a net.
  • Why do schools often enforce rules in unequal ways? Because their financial and reputational dependence on privileged families makes equal enforcement too big a risk.
  • How does homework affect students? When teachers use homework to evaluate, judge, reward, or punish students, it exacerbates social, academic, and disciplinary inequalities in school.
  • How did media messaging impact families' pandemic decisions? It emboldened young, "healthy," white families to prioritize their interests over those of other more vulnerable groups.
  • Who feels comfortable asking for help? More privileged groups seek support more readily, because they have more reason to trust institutions and authorities to help.

Achievements

  • Author of four books, including Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net, Qualitative Literacy, Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle-Class Secures Advantages in School.
  • Award-winning educator and author of A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum.
  • Member of the board of the Council on Contemporary Families.
  • Frequently quoted and published in major media outlets, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and BBC.
  • Mother of two young children.

Tags