Sonja Drobnic

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Sonja Drobnic has been engaged in a cross-national, longitudinal study of spouses’ careers, analyzing the dynamics of employment patterns and following transitions into retirement in the household. The results of her recent comparative research, conducted at the University of Bremen, appeared in Careers of Couples in Contemporary Societies: From Male Breadwinner to Dual-Earner Families (Oxford University Press, 2001), for which she was a coeditor.

Using the Murray Research Center’s data archives during her Radcliffe fellowship, Drobnic will consider how couples manage work and family responsibilities. Her interest is the decision-making and negotiation processes between spouses in dual-earner marriages and the relationship between gender inequality and socioeconomic stratification. She will also look at the role of part-time work in women’s careers, the impact children have on single and married mothers’ employment, women’s health, and such “linked lives” issues as the effects of spouses’ characteristics on individual career patterns.

Drobnic earned her PhD in sociology from Cornell University. She has received fellowships from the Swedish Institute, the European Commission, and the German National Science Foundation.