This study adds to a small but growing literature that situates sleep within gendered work— family responsibilities. We conducted interviews with 25 heterosexual dual-earner working-class couples with children, most of whom had one partner (usually the mother) who worked at night. A few men suffered disrupted sleep because of their commitment to being a coparent to their children, but for most their provider status gave them rights to longer and more continuous sleep. By contrast, as they were the primary caregiver during sentient hours, women’s sleep was curtailed and interrupted by responding to the needs of family members at night and at the beginning of each day, and this was true for women who worked nights as well as days. Furthermore, in struggling to meet their daily employment and familial obligations while tired and sleepy, women further stressed their bodies in ways that can cause cumulative sleep debt. This article demonstrates that sleep deficits are another manifestation of gender inequality, with important implications for long-term health and well-being.

Because women's domestic responsibilities often exceed men's, women are more likely than men to curtail time in discretionary activities as the demands of work escalate (Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie 2006; Hochschild 1989).Sleep might be one such activity affected by meeting one's dual obligations to employers and loved ones. Indeed, the popular press reports that women are increasingly sleep-deprived as As women pursue careers while retaining primary responsibility for family life, discretionary time is an emerging arena of gender inequality in contemporary life. This study examines gender inequality in waking role obligations and the implications for differences in sleep disruption. Drawing on a sample of 583 retail food workers, who regularly worked nights and rotating schedules, we find in our multivariate modeling that women experience significantly more sleep disruption than do men. A decomposition analysis shows that almost one-half of the gender gap in sleep disruption is accounted for by gender differences in health status and various dimensions of work-family context. By implication, the remainder of the gender gap in sleep disruption is attributable to differences in responsibility for work-family obligations. Given the need for more research on how work-family conflict affects health and well-being, further research on sleep patterns is warranted.

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Despite decades of research on job satisfaction, few analysts have examined the relative explanatory power of the demographic composition of the workgroup against traditional predictors that focus on the characteristics of workers' jobs. This article drew from the organizational demography and status composition perspectives to examine the effects of workgroup racial composition on white job satisfaction. The sample consisted of non-Hispanic whites who responded to the 2002 National Study of the Workforce. The findings showed that an increase in the number of minority coworkers negatively affected job satisfaction among whites, until the characteristics of jobs were controlled. The results support the status composition perspective in suggesting that whites are not overtly biased against minority coworkers but rather become dissatisfied with the less favored jobs they share with minorities.