Anat Yom-Tov, who joined Haverford's sociology department as an assistant professor on a tenure-track appointment this term, uses sophisticated data analysis to study the economic disadvantages that women and minorities face in the work world.

Yom-Tov earned a B.A. and M.A. , magna cum laude, in Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University and received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her dissertation, titled Rethinking Inequality: Constrained Opportunities and Structural Barriers to Equality, looks at the causes of the economic disadvantages faced by minorities and women. Previous policies  aimed at solving inequality have usually targeted one aspect of the problem, says Yom-Tov, such as opening up jobs to women and minorities. But her data shows that equal opportunity laws did not solve inequality. Instead the studies show a corresponding decline in the wages and status of jobs whose ranks were opened to women and minorities .

Yom-Tov, who has published papers, with several co-authors, on attitudes about and discrimination against foreign workers and immigrants in Israel, will be teaching a“Quantitative Methods” course this fall in which students will learn the basics of employing  comparative data and using statistical models.“This is a course that can be useful to students not only majoring in sociology, but in many other fields as well—psychology, economics, public health,” she says.  In the class students learn how to apply statistics to their areas of interest and to develop critical ways to analyze statistics presented by the popular media and in professional articles.

In the spring semester Yom-Tov will teach a course on“Inequality in Labor Markets,” as well as a“Social Problems” that will serve as an introduction to sociology for freshman and sophomores.“We'll be looking at the factors that define a social problem,” Yom-Tov says.“When, and how, does a social phenomenon we have taken for granted turn into a social problem?”

-Eils Lotozo