Kanchana Khat, an Economics major with an emphasis in Economic Analysis and Policy, has been honored with the Outstanding Research Presentation Award at the 2024 SACNAS National Diversity in STEM Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Her presentation highlighted her research conducted within the UROC SURI 2024 program, where she collaborated with Principal Investigator Professor Todd Sorensen alongside fellow undergraduate researchers Evan Lee and Crhystian Marquez.
Kanchana presented to one of the largest conferences in the country, bringing together over five-thousand students, professionals, and academics to celebrate and promote diversity in STEM fields. Attendees had the opportunity to network with 550 exhibitors representing colleges, universities, and organizations from across the nation. This year, a total of 1,101 posters and oral presentations were delivered, making Kanchana’s achievement particularly noteworthy.
Under the guidance of Monopsony and Labor Market specialist Professor Todd Sorensen, Kanchana’s research, titled Beyond Wages: Investigating Occupations Segregation and Labor Market Discrimination, examines workplace segregation during the interwar period, analyzing employee records from three notable heavy industry firms: Ford, A.M. Byers, and Pullman. This work builds upon the findings of Foote, Whatley, and Wright (2003), challenging the notion that wage is the only indicator of labor market discrimination.
In the span of nine weeks, Kanchana and her team sorted over 40,000 job titles to categorize occupations and measure racial segregation in the respective firms. They implemented Duncan’s segregation index to quantify disparities and found that Ford, A.M. Byers, and Pullman exhibited varying levels of segregation during the interwar period. Their findings contribute to ongoing discussions about labor market discrimination by highlighting how historical occupational segregation shaped economic disparities.
Congratulations to Kanchana on this remarkable accomplishment!
Read more on the SACNAS conference here.
