Institutional Inequality and the Mobilization of the Family and Medical Leave Act: Rights on Leave

How do Family and Medical Leave Act rights operate in practice in the courts and in the workplace? This empirical study examines how institutions and social practices transform the meaning of these rights to recreate inequality. Workplace rules and norms built around the family wage ideal, the assumption that disability and work are mutually exclusive, and management's historical control over time all constrain opportunities for social change. Yet workers can also mobilize rights as a cultural d…