Claudia Buchmann is a College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor  in the Department of Sociology whose work focuses on comparative and international sociology, social stratification, education, gender, race and ethnicity. Her current research focuses on gender, race and class inequalities in education in the United States and internationally, with a particular focus on the growing female advantage in college completion. Her prior research includes cross-national and comparative studies of the impact of economic policies and institutional forces on educational outcomes and social well-being and case studies of stratification and mobility in Africa. She has served as deputy editor of the American Sociological Review and chair of the Sociology of Education Section of the American Sociological Association.  

Please list your educational history including degrees earned and universities attended.

Ph.D. Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, 1996 - Sociology and African Studies
M.A. Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, 1992 - Sociology
B.A. University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, 1989 - Psychology and German, with Honors

Please describe your current research/creative activity or area(s) of interest. 

For the last 15 years or so, one focus of my research has been the reversal of the gender gap in educational attainment, whereby women have come to attain more education than men. Just a few decades ago, men typically got more education than women, but today the reverse is true: in the U.S. among 25-36 year-olds, 46 percent of women have completed a bachelor’s degree, compared to only 36 percent of men. In fact, in most countries in the world today, women have more education than men. My research seeks to understand the forces that gave rise to this shift and consider its far-reaching consequences for society.

This research began with a hallway conversation with my colleague, Tom DiPrete at Duke University where I was an assistant professor. This was not a scholarly conversation, mind you, actually it was more a parenting conversation. Tom had just returned to the office from an ice cream social for 6th graders, including his daughter, who had gotten all As on their report card. As the kids were called up to receive their awards, Tom noticed that the great majority of them were girls. Around that time, I had been serving as a parent helper in my son’s kindergarten classroom. Every week, I would go in for an hour or so and work with the kids who needed a little extra help – learning the alphabet with flash cards, practicing their penmanship, and so on. As I listened to Tom relay his story, I realized that all the kids I had worked with over the past months – the kids who needed a little extra help -- were boys. As we were talking an idea took form: might these anecdotal experiences offer glimpses of some greater forces at work? The conventional wisdom and scholarly research at that time focused solely on aspects of education in which women trailed men, and the few studies that did acknowledge women’s rates of educational attainment and academic performance treated these facts as anomalies or as irrelevant as since women hadn’t closed the wage gap with men. So it seemed like it was a puzzle to dig into and see whether the terrain of gender inequalities had changed in some important ways.

Little did I know that our conversation that day would lead to a more than a decade-long research collaboration and several research publications, including a book that was among the first to document and explain the growing female advantage in higher education. Currently, I am editing a special issue of a journal on this topic from an international perspective, and with Ohio State colleagues, I am examining the growing female favorable gender gap in graduate and professional degrees in the U.S. today.  

What/who influenced you to select your area(s) of study and how has that impacted your career? 

I would like to answer this question by way of a bit of a story about how I found my way from college to career:

I excelled academically in high school and then in college, majoring in psychology and German at the University of Wisconsin. At the end of college, I knew that I wanted a demanding career, I just had no idea what it would be.

After graduation I moved to Washington, D.C. and took a job in the now defunct U.S. Travel and Tourism Administration. Now this was not a job for a bright-eyed college grad hoping to change the world; I quickly came to realize that the main goal of my coworkers was to get as little work done as possible each day and on top of that, my pathetic salary barely covered my rent. After 6 months there, I took a job as an “administrative assistant” for a sports agent and attorney on K street. While it paid a bit more, it was sheer drudgery and consisted of filing, answering the phone and typing up letters that my boss drafted in his sloppy handwriting that were filled with spelling and grammar errors. I couldn’t resist the urge to correct his run-on sentences and split infinitives and he reprimanded me several times for this. I was starting to feel desperate!

Around that same time, I had the good fortune to see a flier for a conference at American University that was hosted by the Association for Women in Development. I took one day off from work to check out the conference and that was a turning point. I was in awe of the scholars, mostly women, presenting their fascinating research from all over the world. In an aha moment, I had a thought: “I have always been a good student, aren’t professors just students for life?  Maybe I could do that…”

I determined that sociology was the best discipline for me to pursue this type of research. So while my boss was out of the office golfing with Vice President Dan Quayle (yes I am that old!) several days one week, I prepared the application materials. I applied to Indiana University, because I had heard it had a pretty good sociology graduate program and because I had already missed the application deadline for other programs… The day I got the letter of admission from IU was one of the best days of my life! I worked extremely hard in graduate school – those bad jobs in D.C. sparked fear in me about what kind of life I would have if I didn’t. In my third year of graduate school, I received a Fulbright to do research in Kenya and determined I would write my dissertation on how poor families made decisions about their children’s schooling. To achieve this goal I learned Swahili, assembled a research team of students from the University of Nairobi and created and conducted a survey that the research team administered to 500 families in three remote regions of Kenya. It was the most challenging and rewarding work I had ever done. And that was the beginning of my career as a life-long student a.k.a. professor.

What undergraduate classes do you teach?

I teach SOC 2463 Social Stratification.

Why do you think a student should take this class and why would it be of interest to students majoring in other disciplines?

Ohio State's motto is education for citizenship. Today, more than ever, citizens need to consider the core issues of social inequalities, assess the facts and evidence about these issues, and then formulate and articulate their own values based on this information.  My course gives students a foundation for this.

Here is how I describe the course in my syllabus:  Most Americans believe that with hard work, anyone can get ahead. But it is also true that all societies have social stratification - hierarchical relations by which human populations are differentially valued. In this course, we grapple with Americans' “meritocratic ideal” and examine key social institutions and the inequalities within them. We discuss major theories about why inequality exists and persists in societies. Then we investigate class, race and gender as the bases of inequality. Finally, we examine inequalities on a global level. In the process we will seek answers to questions like: Is the middle class in the U.S. really shrinking? Why do Blacks and whites still live so segregated from one another? Why are the majority of college students female and what does this mean for the future? Why does global slavery exist today? Throughout the course, students will critically evaluate a wide range of evidence regarding stratification, social policies and their own values and beliefs about social inequalities. 

What is the most interesting place you have visited? 

I have been fortunate to travel many places throughout the world, but living in Kenya during my Fulbright was the most lifechanging. It enabled me to experience what it feels like to be a minority. In fact, in some of the very remote villages I traveled to, when some small children saw me, they would scream and run away because they had never seen a white person before. I saw extreme poverty and inequality unlike anything I had witnessed in the U.S. which motivated me to study social stratification. I also witnessed amazing resilience and contentment among people who had very few possessions but a deep sense of community.  Living in Kenya taught me several life lessons that shaped my identity, goals and way of life.

What advice would you give to undergraduate students? 

Be kind to yourself and others.

In life’s big decisions, go ahead and list off all the pros and cons, but in the end trust your gut.  

When you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, you learn the most about yourself and world.

Learn more about Professor Buchmann’s work, email, and office location on her department page.