A common misperception in the U.S. is that time off needs to be earned, deserved, and sacrificed for.

Have you ever felt guilty about taking your (hard-earned) sick or vacation days? If so, you aren’t alone. According to a recent Zippia survey of 214 job seekers, 61.3 percent of Americans feel guilty about taking time off work and women are 20 percent more likely to feel guilty about taking time off work than men.

For women in particular, it’s often difficult to shake the anxiety that comes with enjoying time with your family on vacation or taking a long weekend to “do you.” Not only do workplace dynamics contribute to this pattern, but for women shouldering the majority of caretaking responsibilities, a working mother’s vacation time is often a shared asset – used for family needs like kids’ doctor appointments, attendance at school events and emergencies.

Sociologists Elizabeth Gorman of the University of Virginia and Julie Kmec of Washington State University recently conducted a study to explore how women feel they need to work harder than their male counterparts.

In short, women feel they must prove themselves for leaders to see them as competent. Gorman and Kmec eventually concluded that women feel the need to work hard because they simply don’t get as much credit as men do.

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A social movements expert says these tactics only convince people who already think climate change is serious.

Young activists are taking an eye-catching tactic to demand action on climate change this year — hurling food at famous pieces of art.

The activists say they’re trying to stop an oil pipeline, limit fossil fuel use, and wake up the masses to the gravity of the climate crisis.

The wave of food-throwing climate protests prompted international outcry, with government officials and art experts shunning the practice and museums the world over increasing security, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“What I’ve found is that these tactics are likely to be viewed as positive by people who already believe that climate change is a serious social problem,” Dylan Bugden, a sociologist at Washington State University who studies global climate change protests, told Insider.

In Bugden’s research, he’s found disruptive and confrontational tactics aren’t effective on people who are not already concerned about climate change. “While that speaks to the limitations of this form of protest, it is also evidence that these tactics are unlikely to backfire,” Bugden said, adding, “These more extreme tactics tend to preach to the choir more than anything.”

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Business Insider

If women want to lean in to work, they may first want to lie down for a good night’s rest. A Washington State University-led study indicated that sleep quality impacted women’s mood and changed how they felt about advancing in their careers. Meanwhile, men’s aspirations were not impacted by sleep quality.

The researchers discovered this finding in a two-week-long survey study of 135 workers in the U.S. Each day the participants first noted how well they had slept and the quality of their current mood, and then later in the day how they felt about striving for more status and responsibility at work.

For the study published in the journal Sex Roles, researchers, including WSU sociologist Julie Kmec, surveyed full-time employees twice a day for two consecutive work weeks for a total of more than 2,200 observations. The participants answered questions about their previous night’s sleep and current mood around noon every day and in the evenings answered questions about their intentions to pursue more responsibility, status, and influence at work.

Both men and women reported good and bad sleep quality over the course of the study, notably with no gender difference in reported sleep quality. However, women more often reported lowered intentions to pursue more status at work on days following a night of poor sleep.

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Doanh Nghiep Viet Nam

In 2020, more than 37 million Americans lived in poverty according to new data from the U.S Census Bureau. That’s 3.3 million more than in 2019.

But this number doesn’t include those who are above the poverty line and struggling to make a living.

According to the Poor People’s Campaign, once low-income families are accounted for, that number is closer to 140 million Americans.

What does it actually mean to be poor? How do people fall below the poverty line? And why is it so hard to get above it? We carve out time to talk about poverty in America in our series “The Price of Poverty.”

Washington State University sociologist Jennifer Sherman is among three national experts who spoke on the topic in the first part of a series by 1A.

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NPR