Intersectionalities: Class, Race, Gender and Sexualities
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Summary readings intersectionalities week 2
Andes, N. (1992). Social class and gender: An empirical evaluation of
occupational stratification
Three theoretical frameworks of stratification are compared:
1. Sex segregation model sex affects the positioning of workers in the labor force
2. Pure class model class affects the positioning of workers in the labor force structural
position of their occupation in regard to authority, autonomy, and property ownership
3. Gendered social class model gender and class simultaneously affect the positioning of
women and men in the labor force.
Research question: how do occupations and workers become empirically configured into an
identifiable gendered class stratification pattern?
Hypothesis: the individual attribute of sex does not reflect underlying social organizational processes
affecting inequitable placement of women and men in occupations.
Sex segregation perspective
Claims that sex segregation is an important source of occupational differences. Women’s life
chances and occupational positions are so different from men’s that women make an distinct
stratification system.
But: 1) this system ignores structural features beyond the segregation of workers and 2) by
placing all women in the same system, it ignores diversity among women.
Pure class perspective
Claims that differences in hierarchy among workers are created through differences among
their production/consumption and through the power and benefits that accrue to workers in
different class segments within capitalism.
But: this approach excludes the role of gender.
Gendered class perspective
Connects gender and class: women’s and men’s positioning to sources and processes of
stratification. Class relations are seen as part of capitalism, gender refers to signs of
patriarchy within society. A woman’s position can be generated because she is a woman,
because she is a member of a particular social class, or both.
Andes takes the third perspective by taking the social and economic structures of capitalism and
patriarchy as primary sources of occupational segregation in the labor force.
First task: to assess whether this new class scheme reflects women’s segregation in the labor force.
Second task: to assess whether knowing the sex of a worker better predicts occupational position
than the initial allocation made solely in terms of gendered social class attributes.
Results:
- Women are not distributed across all social classes in equal proportion to their overall labor
force participation
- Including sex in the classification scheme does not improve the classification rates beyond
those previously obtained
- The percentage of occupations correctly classified in the actual male and female samples
above the level of this baseline measure shows the importance that sex has in the model
while controlling for smaller sample sizes
, - The need to use sex as an additional identifier of class position or to view women’s positions
as orthogonally distinct from men’s positions in the class structure is not supported
- These results do not imply that gender is unimportant in the allocation of workers to class
positions. Because different proportions of the women and men are allocated to classes,
gender does matter right from the generation of the stratification system. But the
differentiation is due to integrated gendered class attributes – not sex alone. Both gender
and social class place women and men differentially into occupational positions, and we see
empirical support for an integrated gendered class perspective of social classes.
- Both class and gender are needed to understand mechanisms affecting individual positioning
within the stratification system
- Women have the least chance to be part of the owner, professional and upper-managerial
classes
Conclusion:
- Gender is an essential element in social class systems because gender and class reflect
mutually reinforcing social processes, sorting women and men into significantly different
gendered social class positions with different life chances and outcomes. We can no longer
keep them in separate sociological compartments.
- Property, autonomy, and authority relations characteristic in gendered social class positions
account for a differentiation of all workers in ways that prestige criteria of education and
income cannot.
- Class is gendered 8capitalist development creates the places for a hierarchy of workers,
but traditional Marxist categories cannot tell us who fill which places. Gender and racial
hierarchies determine who fills the empty places. Patriarchy is not simply hierarchical
organization, but hierarchy in which particular people fill particular places.’
Savage et al. (2013). A new model of social class? Findings from the
BCC’s great British class survey experiment.
Bourdieu’s multidimensional thinking
Critique on Goldthorpe’s class schema:
- Occupational status is central in Goldthorpe’s class scheme.
- No link between class and cultural consumption
- Small groups (elite) are not visible because of the small sample
- If the goal is to study economical inequality, it might be better to focus on income groups
Critiques leads to the developing of a new, multi-dimensional way of registering social class
differentiation. Seeking to differentiate between our measures of economic, social and cultural
capital to assess where the main class boundaries are placed.
How to measure social capital?
1. Mean status score of the occupations that respondents know
2. The mean number of social contacts reported.
How to measure cultural capital?
- Highbrow cultural capital (classical music, museums, art galleries, jazz, theatre)
- Emerging cultural capital (video games, playing sport, watching sport, spending time with
friends, going to the gym, preferences for rap and rock)
How to measure economic capital?
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