Katherine Maich
  • Assistant Professor

Biography

I am currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University. My teaching and research interests include law, gender, labor informality, domestic work, ethnography, and the Global South. My research examines dynamics of inequality in the workplace and the extent to which external factors such as law, regulation and policy mitigate those dynamics, and with what consequences.

With funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the Inter-American Foundation, my book, Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights, draws from over 24 months of ethnography in Lima, Peru and New York City, 120 in-depth interviews, and analysis of legislative transcripts. Through a Global South/North comparison, it focuses on the home as a site of paid labor and as a microcosm of social and symbolic boundaries, bringing feminist theory, race, gender and migration into conversation with law and labor legislation.

One of my current projects (with Hilary Wething of the Economic Policy Institute) explores the effects of paid family leave on maternal mental health and time use for new mothers, and the second project (in collaboration with Oxfam America and Rural Sociology colleagues at Penn State) examines the reproduction of gender and racial inequality for migrant poultry plant and meatpacking plant workers.

I previously worked as a consultant for the International Labour Organization and the International Domestic Worker Federation by conducting fieldwork in Uruguay, Hong Kong, and South Africa on the complexities of domestic worker organizing at the international level. Drawing connections from community-based local and global social movements in practice provides inspiration for my own research and writing.

Representative Media Coverage

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/domestic-workers-bill-of-rights-legislation-enforcement/

Research Interests

  • Gender
  • Law and Society
  • Domestic Work
  • Ethnography
  • Global South

Educational Background

  • Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

Awards & Honors

    • Labor Research and Action Network New Scholar Award, 2020
    • Early Career Scholar, American Sociological Association, Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section, 2019
    • The Cheryl Allyn Miller Paper Award, Sociologists for Women in Society, 2017
    • American Association of University Women American Dissertation Fellowship, 2015
    • Mellon Latin American Sociology Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2010

Selected Publications

    • Maich, Katherine Eva. Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights. Under contract at Stanford University Press.
    • Anner, Mark, Matthew Fischer-Daly, Sifat Amita, Katherine Maich, Samuel Okyere, and Ye Yint. 2023. "Worker Voice: What it is, what it is not, and why it matters." Research Report, Center for Global Workers' Rights. The Pennsylvania State University.
    • Maich, Katherine, Jennifer Fish, and Eileen Boris. 2021. “Amplifying Rights through Activist
      Research with Domestic Worker Organisations: Academic Research Reflections.” C189 European Alliance. Step up efforts towards decent work for domestic workers in the EU: 10th Anniversary of ILO Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189).
    • Maich, Katherine Eva. 2020. “Of Home and Whom: Logics of Universalism in the Regulation of Difference.” Political Power and Social Theory 37: 185-214.
    • Maich, Katherine Eva, Jamie K. McCallum, and Ari Grant-Sasson. 2019. “Time’s Up! Shorter Hours, Public Policy, and Time Flexibility as an Antidote to Youth Unemployment.” In Youth, Jobs, and the Future: Problems and Prospects, edited by Lynn Chancer, Martin Sanchez-Jankowski, and Christine Trost. Oxford Press.
    • Vijayakumar, Gowri, and Katherine Eva Maich. 2018. “Politicizing Gender: Feminist
      Movements.” In The Social Life of Gender, edited by Raka Ray, Jennifer Carlson and Abigail Andrews. London: Sage Press.