Wonjeong Jeong
Postdoctoral Associate
Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: BA Yonsei University; MA Cornell University; PhD Cornell University
Research Areas: Gender disparities in the labor market; family demography
Wonjeong Jeong got her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Sociology at Yonsei University in Seoul, after which she earned PhD degree also in Sociology at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Her research is broadly on gender disparities in the labor market, and how they intersect with family dynamics. One of her projects specifically focuses on the changing fertility and marital rates in the US over the past decades, what that means for gender employment and wage gaps, and how that is different depending on the level of education and the time period. Her doctoral dissertation focused on self-employment as a potential option for women to juggle family and work, i.e., as a way to “have-it-all.” The studies in this dissertation suggest that self-employment might be merely a way to temporarily circumvent women's unmet needs for flexibility that cannot be achieved through wage employment. However, it is not likely to be a sustainable or lucrative career path.