For legal scholars interested in this question, here’s a little NLR gift!
KT’s “quick-start” list of empirical resources on the EFFECTS OF LAW ON DISCRIMINATION:
Edelman, Lauren, Linda Krieger, Scott Eliason, Catherine Albiston, Virginia Mellema: “When Organizations Rule: Judicial Deference to Institutionalized Employment Structures.” American Journal of Sociology 117(3):888-954 (2011)
Edelman, Lauren B., Erlanger, Howard S., and Land, John. 1993. “Internal Dispute Resolution: The Transformation of Civil Rights in the Workplace.” Law & Society Review 27:497-534.
Quinn, Beth A. 2000. “The Paradox of Complaining: Law, Humor, and Harassment in the Everyday Work World.” Law and Social Inquiry 25:1151-1185.
Marshall, Anna-Maria. 2003. “Injustice Frames, Legality, and the Everyday Construction of Sexual Harassment.” Law and Social Inquiry 28:659-689.
Marshall, Anna-Maria. 2005. “Idle Rights: Employees’ Rights Consciousness and the Construction of Sexual Harassment Policies.” Law and Society Review 39:83-124.
Albiston, C. 2005. “Bargaining in the Shadow of Social Institutions: Competing Discourses and Social Change in Workplace Mobilization of Civil Rights.” Law and Society Review 39(1): 11-50.
Albiston, C. 2007. “Institutional Perspectives on Law, Work, and Family.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 3: 397-426.
Wayne, J. H. and B. L. Cordeiro. 2003. “Who is a Good Organizational Citizen? Social Perception of Male and Female Employees Who Use Family Leave.” Sex Roles 49(5/6): 233-246.
COLLECTED ARTICLES:
New Civil Rights Research: Rights Consciousness and Claiming in the United States, edited by Benjaming Fleury Steiner and Laura Beth Nielsen: Dartmouth/Ashgate Press.
EXAMPLES OF articles about what workplace practices matter and what happens within organizations:
Kelly, Erin L., and Alexandra Kalev. 2006. “Managing flexible work arrangements in US organizations: formalized discretion or ‘a right to ask’.” Socio-Economic Review 4:379-416.
Kalev, Alexandra, Frank Dobbin and Erin Kelly. 2006. “Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies.” American Sociological Review 71(4):589-617.
Kalev, Alexandra and Frank Dobbin. 2006. “Enforcement of Civil Rights Law in Private Workplaces: Compliance Reviews and Lawsuits Before and After Reagan.” Law and Social Inquiry 31(4) (December).
Kelly, Erin L. 2010. “Failure to Update: An Institutional Perspective on Noncompliance with the Family & Medical Leave Act.” Law & Society Review. 44 (1): 33-66.
SOME OLDER RESEARCH on fathers and parental leave:
Malin, Martin H. 1993-94. “Fathers and Parental Leave.” Texas Law Review 72:1047-1095.
Malin, Martin H. 1998. “Fathers and Parental Leave Revisited.” Northern Illinois University Law Review 19:25-56.
EXPERIENCES OF WOMEN in the legal profession:
Janet Rosenberg, Harry Perlstadt, & William R.F. Phillips, “Now That We Are Here: Discrimination, Disparagement, and Harassment at Work and the Experience of Women Lawyers,” 7 Gender & Society 415 (1993).
AUDIT STUDIES of who gets hired despite discrimination laws:
S.J. Correll, S. Benard, I. Paik, “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?,” 112 Am. J. Sociol. 1297 (2007).
Devah Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” 108 American Journal of Sociology 937 (2003).