Fellowship / Fellows

Alexandra Killewald

  • 2017–2018
  • Social Sciences
  • Katherine Hampson Bessell Fellow
  • Harvard University
Headshot of Alexandra Killewald
Photo by Tony Rinaldo

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

Alexandra (Sasha) Killewald is a professor of sociology at Harvard University. Her research examines the role of gender and family relationships in social inequality, with an emphasis on the work-family intersection. Recently, she has described how partnership and parenthood affect men’s and women’s wages in the United States.

Killewald is undertaking a book project testing whether the recent stall in progress toward gender parity in employment and housework in the United States is the result of a gender revolution that dramatically expanded women’s opportunities yet left the male breadwinner norm intact, so that responsibility for balancing work and family still falls largely to women. Using quantitative analysis of large-scale surveys of American men and women, Killewald is exploring how men’s paid employment continues to shape their family lives and how women’s outcomes are in turn affected by their husbands’ ongoing focus on paid rather than unpaid labor.

Killewald received her PhD in public policy and sociology from the University of Michigan in 2011. In 2014, she received, with Margaret Gough, the Article of the Year Award from the American Sociological Association’s section on the sociology of the family, for their American Sociological Review article “Does Specialization Explain Marriage Penalties and Premiums?” Her research has been supported by such organizations as the Russell Sage Foundation and the W.E. Upjohn Institute.

Our 2023–2024 Fellows

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