Holding it Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net

Join the UH College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and Department of Sociology for a compelling exploration of Pr*son education's transformative power. Each year the Sociology Department sponsors a "Sociology in Action" (SIA) lecture event to highlight outstanding work in our field. The department strives to highlight timely topics in our ever-changing social world. For over a decade, this annual event emphasizes the connections between sociological research, application in our society, ethics in research, and academic leadership to tackle important social issues.
Dr. Jessica Calarco will be speaking about how women have become America's crisis management team—tasked with holding society together at the seams and fixing it when things fall apart. Drawing on extensive research—including longitudinal interviews, historical and media analyses, and national surveys—Holding It Together reveals how billionaires, big corporations, and their cronies use women’s unpaid and underpaid labor to maintain the illusion of a “DIY society,” making it seem as though we don’t need more public investment in sectors like childcare, eldercare, healthcare, education, and social welfare, because women are filling in the gaps.

This event is open to the public and free to attend.

The 2026 Sociology in Action guest lecture will be Dr. Jessica Calarco, Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net (Portfolio/Penguin, 2024). See more at: https://www.jessicacalarco.com/

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Host or Publisher UH College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences