Data and research on social and welfare issues including families and children, gender equality, GINI coefficient, well-being, poverty reduction, human capital and inequality., Inequality is a multi-dimensional challenge, it goes beyond income and it affects the well-being of our people. Evidence now tells us that the levels of inequality are becoming an impediment for progress, and that We have said that the women’s movement changed American life in many ways but that gender inequality persists. Let’s look at examples of such inequality, much of it taking the form of institutional discrimination, which, as we saw in Chapter 7 “Deviance, Crime, and Social Control”, can occur even if it is not intended to blogger.com start with gender inequality in income and the 17/01/ · Background. Sizeable health inequalities by race [1,2], gender [3,4] and class [] have been recorded in blogger.comtent with traditional sociological understandings of social inequality, these axes of inequality have for the most part been considered individually, with researchers only considering potential interconnectedness when investigating whether class mediates associations between
The Sociology of Social Inequality
Try out PMC Labs and tell us what you think. Learn More. b Princeton University, Department of Psychology and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Peretsman-Scully HallPrinceton, NJUSA.
Social class stereotypes support inequality through various routes: ambivalent content, early appearance in children, achievement consequences, institutionalization in education, appearance in cross-class social encounters, and prevalence in the most unequal societies.
Class-stereotype content is ambivalent, describing lower-SES people both negatively less competent, less human, more objectifiedand sometimes positively, perhaps warmer than upper-SES people.
Children acquire the wealth aspects of class stereotypes early, which become more nuanced with development. In school, class stereotypes advantage higher-SES students, social class in gender inequality, and educational contexts institutionalize social-class distinctions. Beyond school, well-intentioned face-to-face encounters ironically draw on stereotypes to reinforce the alleged competence of higher-status people and sometimes the alleged warmth of lower-status people.
Countries with more inequality show more of these ambivalent stereotypes of both lower- and higher-SES people. At a variety of levels and life stages, social-class stereotypes reinforce inequality, but constructive contact can undermine them; future efforts need to address high-status privilege and to query more heterogeneous samples. Social class SC is a stratification system that ranks people by their differential access to material, social, and cultural resources, which shapes their lives in important ways [ 1 ].
These oversimplified characterizations i. However, we use the original labels to specify which terms participants encounter in the research reviewed, social class in gender inequality. Two limitations: Our review does not address the accuracy or origins of SC stereotypes; our purview also mostly limits us to publications from onward.
Within these constraints, the review describes the often-ambivalent content of social-class stereotypes, when children acquire them, social class in gender inequality, their academic consequences, their institutionalization in education, and their role in other cross-class encounters. Finally, cross-national data link stereotype ambivalence to inequality.
Throughout, stereotypes reinforce inequality, but in distinct ways, beyond a merely good-bad axis. Addressing inequality requires systematic attention to the content of class stereotypes to reduce their prevalence. People consistently attribute well-being, health, and intelligence to people with high socioeconomic status SESregardless of their own SES [ 4 ]. Rich people, as a salient societal group, are cross-nationally 37 samples in 27 nations stereotyped as more competent but colder than poor people, especially under conditions of greater income inequality [ 5 ].
In contrast, poor people are stereotyped as lazy and substance abusers in the US [ 6 ] as well as in the egalitarian Sweden [ 7 ]. Low-status e. The picture becomes even bleaker upon considering racial biases that often overlap class-based stereotypes. In particular, social class in gender inequality, both Black and White respondents implicitly social class in gender inequality explicitly associate Black targets with low-SES jobs and White targets with high-SES jobs [ 11 ].
SC is a complex social category that children may acquire later than categories of gender, race, and ethnicity. However, preschoolers, when specifically asked, can classify individuals as rich and poor, and by the age of six they perceive a rich man as more competent e. Children very early 4—6 years-old develop a preference for wealthy groups [ 1516 ] and use wealth cues to form their preferences toward social class in gender inequality, inferring their competence and popularity, with White children linking race to social class as adults do [ 16 ].
By the beginning of middle school, children become aware of their own subjective social status, primarily informed by purchasing power wealthand they hold more negative stereotypes of poor than middle-class and rich people [ 16 ].
Adolescents have more knowledge of wealth than poverty as social class in gender inequality wealthy are the models to imitate, social class in gender inequality. SC stereotyping research addresses the domain where young people spend most of their waking hours, namely the consequences of class-based stereotypes for students and their academic performance, as well as stereotypical expectations that people in general, and teachers in particular, hold about pupils with different economic backgrounds.
As noted, rich people are stereotyped as intelligent and, psychometrically speaking, wealthier people do tend to have higher IQ and SAT scores compared to low-income people [ 20 ]. Despite various explanations for such a class gap in testing, scholars have only just started to investigate this phenomenon within the stereotype-threat framework albeit even so, rarely : namely, a situational predicament affects intellectual performances of individuals who belong to negatively stereotyped groups in the intellectual domain; their performance potentially reflects on their SC group as well as themselves.
Making SES salient e. Situational factors, thus, account for at least part of class differences in academic performance. Finally, stereotype threat even affects immune health outcomes. Besides situational threats, societal stereotypes can be internalized. Indeed, low-income people hold lower self-esteem [ 25 ; although not all minority groups, see 2627 ], and working-class undergraduates present lower self-evaluations of their own IQ, fluid and crystalized intelligence, and creativity the latter to a lesser extent than their middle-class counterparts, more so if they also belong to a minority group [ 28 ].
However, compensating for stereotypic lack of competence, lower-ranked people may social class in gender inequality value their own warmth trustworthiness, friendliness [ 29 ], as others do [ 5 ].
Consistently, teachers appear to be biased by social class in gender inequality more academic failure to low-SES students, more frequently reporting them to special education, treating high- versus low-SES families differently. Social scientists agree that education institutionalizes and reproduces SC inequality.
The culture of the dominant group social class in gender inequality educational institutions for instance, the middle-class model of social class in gender inequality [ 33 ]. Therefore, middle- and upper-class students are more equipped to face academic challenges and are more familiar with academic expectations. In one experimental study, even the way different performances are normally showcased in classrooms i.
not showcased. However, making students aware of their hidden disadvantage i. In the Swedish upper-secondary school system, 15—16 year-old students decide between academic and vocational programs, the former being chosen mostly by upper- and middle-class students, the latter by working-class students [ 35 ]. When students enrolled in academic programs described both a typical academic and vocational student, the descriptions mirrored those of social classes: Academic students are allegedly rich, intelligent, ambitious, and hardworking, whereas vocational students are allegedly poor, unmotivated, unintelligent, and slack.
Vocational students are also allegedly lazy, substance-abusing, with poor-language—stereotypes identified [ 6 ] about poor people social class in gender inequality the US. Partly because of such stereotype content, low-SES students encounter many barriers when they enter college, social class in gender inequality, especially if they are first-generation college students [for review, see 36 ]. Consequences include feeling emotional distress and reduced well-being, managing a stereotyped identity and vulnerable self-perception as not belonging, as well as dealing with motivational issues in self-efficacy, goal-setting, and fear of failure.
Interventions however follow from the interpersonal and societal dynamics described next. SC can be signaled in many ways e. In other words, social class in gender inequality, SC shapes social interactions. Theoretically, cross-class encounters may elicit anxiety, leading individuals in work environments to conform to their class rules, through institutionalized, class-specific behavior i. Cross-class encounters also potentially entail mutual mistrust of each class allegedly exploiting the other [ 41 ], but people from different classes confront different dilemmas.
But the stereotyped lower-SES identity can also include warmth and trustworthiness. On the other hand, distrust of higher-SES professions CEOs, lawyers, scientists can create resentment and disbelief [ 43 ], at the same time as grudging respect.
Lower-status people trying to affiliate talk up by emphasizing competence to match their stereotype of the higher-status person. Race imitates status, as well-intentioned Whites, including presidential candidates, talk down to minority audiences [ 4446 ]. Cross-class encounters can be socially dysfunctional in predictable ways because of ambivalent cross-class stereotypes. At least in the US, SC even predicts how people spend their social time, creating another SC mismatch.
Across races, people with higher incomes spend more time alone, and prefer to socialize with friends rather than family and neighbors perhaps reflecting stereotypes that the privileged are cold, possibly because they are self-sufficientcompared to lower income people [ 47 ]. In three studies, using different materials and methodologies, higher- versus lower-SC individuals differed in their visual attention patterns: Higher SC individuals paid less attention to people and human faces than did lower SC individuals.
However, the more general higher-class advantages do not always hold, but instead disappear for women in elite labor markets: When law firms evaluate candidates, higher-class men, but not women, receive the best evaluations compared to lower-class men and women. The stereotype of women as less committed to career because of being more devoted to family and childcare i. The aspects of negative stereotypes targeting low-SES people can only be an additional burden in already difficult contexts.
For instance, in the US, a typical criminal is seen as low-SES, and in mock jury studies low-SES offenders receive longer sentences than higher income offenders. Less is known about juvenile delinquents, who nowadays are more and more tried in adult courts, where they receive more severe punishments compared to juvenile courts [ 51 ].
In an experimental study, despite the low- vs. high- SES juvenile offender being more often found guilty and to a greater extent, he was also social class in gender inequality as less capable of understanding the criminal court process and the consequences of his actions i. The harsher verdict toward the low-SES juvenile seemed in fact partially explained by the negative stereotype as a superpredator i.
Therefore, paradoxically, the verdict is harsher, although the low-SES offender is considered less responsible [ 51 ]. Ambivalent stereotypes describe a nuanced landscape of allegedly undeserving, untrustworthy poor people e. Likewise, certain trustworthy professionals doctors deserve wealth, while allegedly untrustworthy others lawyers do not. Nations with high income-inequality display these complicated stereotype maps, which may subjectively justify and therefore stabilize their unequal systems.
In contrast, more equal nations display a larger societal ingroup that comprises everyone eligible for government support, groups all seen as relatively high on both warmth and competence. In contrast are a social class in gender inequality groups e. Equality does not require as complex a system of stereotypes to be stable. Academic situations are pregnant with arbitrary, implicit standards that advantage upper- middle-class students, perpetuating inequality.
Teaching students about stereotype threat may help undermine its effects [ 24 ]. Further, although universities generate many of the barriers to achievement and belonging, some psychological interventions are effective: affirming self, educating about differences, and reframing goals from evaluation to learning [ 3336 ]. We know less about stereotypes and privileges or burdens of higher-SES people, who may be both resented social class in gender inequality admired.
For example, higher-status people may hide their identity, to avoid uncomfortable comparisons [ 52 ], social class in gender inequality. Although the social and psychological burden clearly disadvantages lower-SES people, cross-class interactions need to be documented on both sides.
However, one lesson from cross-status encounters is that lower-status people seek respect [ 4552 ], as well as recognition and influence [ 53 ]. Constructive cross-class contact—particularly if equal-status, authority-sanctioned, in-depth, and seriously interdependent [ 54 ]—can overcome prejudice and stereotypes.
Social class in gender inequality equal status within the context will be difficult for social-class intergroup contact to establish. But if it can, for example in sharing neighborhood or town governance, working side-by-side can seed the conditions of potential friendship that facilitates individuation.
Moving forward, we also need to know more about non-WEIRD settings [ 56 ]; most studies use US—and often university—samples. More diverse samples likely will reveal cultural similarities SES rank is essentially universal and differences power distance differs. As noted, more unequal countries have more ambivalent stereotypes [ 9 ]; both extremely peaceful and extremely conflictual ones also have simpler us-them stereotypes, folding social class into a single good-bad vector [ 57 ], social class in gender inequality.
Broadening the social class in gender inequality net will mitigate the often-ambivalent social-class stereotypes that enable current extremes of inequality. Social class stereotypes depict low-income people as less competent than higher-income individuals, but perhaps warmer.
Social class distinctions are institutionalized in education, becoming barriers for low-SES students. Unequal countries especially use ambivalent stereotypes incompetent but warm poor, competent but cold rich. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. Social class in gender inequality a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript, social class in gender inequality.
The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
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, time: 56:04Gender Economic Inequality - blogger.com
We have said that the women’s movement changed American life in many ways but that gender inequality persists. Let’s look at examples of such inequality, much of it taking the form of institutional discrimination, which, as we saw in Chapter 7 “Deviance, Crime, and Social Control”, can occur even if it is not intended to blogger.com start with gender inequality in income and the 17/01/ · Background. Sizeable health inequalities by race [1,2], gender [3,4] and class [] have been recorded in blogger.comtent with traditional sociological understandings of social inequality, these axes of inequality have for the most part been considered individually, with researchers only considering potential interconnectedness when investigating whether class mediates associations between 21/10/ · Sociologist Dalton Conley, Henry Putnam University Professor in Sociology at Princeton University, will give a virtual lecture on how socioeconomic inequality manifests across generations today, October 21, as part of this year’s BU Diversity and Inclusion’s Learn More lecture series, which is focusing on issues of social class
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