Elizabeth Hirsh
Wall Associate

Dr. Elizabeth Hirsh is Associate Professor of Sociology and Canada Research Chair in Social Inequality and Law at the University of British Columbia. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2006 and taught at Cornell University for four years before coming to UBC. Dr. Hirsh’s research and teaching are in the areas of inequality, organizations and the law. Much of her work focuses on employment discrimination and the impact of antidiscrimination laws and organizational policies on gender, race, and ethnic inequality in the workplace.
Current projects include a study of the economic, political, and organizational conditions under which employment discrimination lawsuits filed under U.S. civil rights laws bring about change in sex and race inequality in the workplace and a study of the impact of human resources practices on discrimination disputes. Other ongoing projects include a qualitative study of the factors that lead workers to file employment discrimination lawsuits; an analysis of corporate adoption of gender identity and expression non-discrimination policies; an analysis of how status characteristics, workplace conditions, and neighborhood contexts influence workers’ self-reports of race discrimination; and a study of the extent of occupational segregation by sex, race, ethnicity, and Hispanicity in the U.S. labor force.