So Yun Park received an ASA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG) for the 2025–2026 academic year for her dissertation, Navigating Family Leave Usage in the Workplace: Unpacking Institutional, Cultural, and Social Influences.
This research examines how workplace dynamics shape the utilization of family leave policies. Drawing on court cases involving family leave-related disputes, a novel dataset merging employer-employee information, and a survey experiment, I investigate how employer practices, organizational culture, and peer relationships shape whether and how employees use family leave for childbirth or childcare. This project contributes to organizational sociology, sociology of law, and economic sociology by demonstrating how workplace contexts shape disparities in policy implementation.