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The United States has a high level of income inequality, with a wide gap between the top and bottom brackets of earners.
Learning Objectives
• Explain the development of income distribution in the US since the 1970’s and what is meant by the “Great Divergence”
Key Points
• Since the 1970s, inequality has increased dramatically in the United States.
• Different groups get different compensation for the same work. The discrepancy in wages between males and females is called the ” gender wage gap,” and the discrepancy between whites and minorities is called the “racial wage gap”.
• While earnings from capital and investment are still a significant cause of inequality, income is increasingly segregated by occupation as well. Of earners, 60% in the top 0.1% are executives, managers, supervisors, and financial professionals.
Key Terms
• Race Wage Gap: The difference in earnings between racial or ethnic groups.
• Gender Wage Gap: The difference between male and female earnings expressed as a percentage of male earnings.
• great divergence: Refers to the growth of economic inequality in America since the 1970s.
Unequal distribution of income between genders, races, and the population, in general, in the United States has been the frequent subject of study by scholars and institutions. Inequality between male and female workers, called the “gender wage gap,” has decreased considerably over the last several decades. During the same time, inequality between black and white Americans, sometimes called the “race wage gap,” has stagnated, not improving but not getting worse. Nevertheless, data from a number of sources indicate that overall income inequality in the United States has grown significantly since the late 1970s, widening the gap between the country’s rich and poor.
A number of studies by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have found that the distribution of income in the United States has become increasingly unequal since the 1970s. Economist Paul Krugman and journalist Timothy Noah have referred to this trend as the “Great Divergence.” Since the 1970s, income inequality has grown almost continuously, with the exceptions being during the economic recessions in 1990-91, 2001, and 2007. The Great Divergence differs in some ways from the pre-Depression era inequality observed in the early 1900s (the last period of great inequality). Before 1937, a larger share of top earners’ income came from capital (interest, dividends, income from rent, capital gains). Post-1970, a higher proportion of the income of high-income taxpayers comes predominantly from employment compensation–60% of earners in the top 0.1% are executives, managers, supervisors, and financial professionals, and the five most common professions among the top 1% of earners are managers, physicians, administrators, lawyers, and financial specialists. Still, much of the richest Americans’ accumulated wealth is in the form of stocks and real estate.
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Social mobility is the movement of an individual or group from one social position to another over time.
Learning Objectives
• Assess how different factors facilitate social mobility
Key Points
• A person’s ability to move between social positions depends upon their economic, cultural, human, and social capital.
• The attributes needed to move up or down the social hierarchy are particular to each society; some countries value economic gain, for example, while others prioritize religious status.
• Social mobility typically refers to vertical mobility, movement of individuals or groups up or down from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marriage.
Key Terms
• Relative Social Mobility: A measure of a person’s upward or downward movement in the social hierarchy compared to the movement of other members of their inherited social class.
• meritocratic: Used to describe a type of society where wealth, income, and social status are assigned through competition.
• social mobility: the degree to which, in a given society, an individual’s, family’s, or group’s social status can change throughout the course of their life through a system of social hierarchy or stratification
• Intergenerational Mobility: Refers to the phenomenon whereby a child attains higher or lower status than their parents.
Social mobility refers to the movement of individuals or groups in social positions over time. Most commonly, social mobility refers to the change in wealth and social status of individuals or families. However, it may also refer to changes in health status, literacy rate, education, or other variables among groups, such as classes, ethnic groups, or countries.
Social mobility typically refers to vertical mobility, movement of individuals or groups up or down from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marriage. Nonetheless, social mobility can also refer to horizontal mobility, movement from one position to another within the same social level, as when someone changes between two equally prestigious occupations.
In some cases, social mobility is intergenerational, as when children attain a higher or lower status than their parents held. Other times, social mobility is intra-generational, meaning that a person changes status within their lifetime. A high level of intergenerational mobility is often considered praiseworthy and can be seen as a sign of equality of opportunity in a society.
A distinction can also be drawn between absolute social mobility, which refers to the total observed movement of people between classes, and relative social mobility, which is an estimate of the chance of upward or downward movement of a member of one social class in comparison with a member from another class. An example of absolute social movement is when a region’s economic development provides quality education to a social group that previously did not have access to education, thus raising the group’s literacy level and socioeconomic status. Relative social mobility might refer to the opportunities presented to a middle class child born in a particular area of the United States, who might be predicted to attain a college level education and a maximum income of \$80,000, for example.
Social mobility can be enabled to varying extents by economic capital, cultural capital, human capital, and social capital. Economic capital includes a person’s financial and material resources, such as income and accumulated wealth. Cultural capital includes resources ranging from holding a graduate degree to having a grasp of a group’s customs and rituals, both of which may confer an advantage in job markets and social exchanges. Human capital refers to such individual traits as competence and work ethic, which may enable increased educational or professional attainment. Social capital includes the advantages conferred by one’s social network, such as access to professional opportunities and insider knowledge. These types of capital facilitate mobility by providing access to opportunities and the tools to acquire wealth and status.
Societies present different opportunities for mobility depending on their systems of value. For example, Western capitalist countries are generally meritocratic. In such countries, social standing is based on such personal attributes as educational attainment, income, and occupational prestige. Thus, the degree of mobility in Western capitalist states depends on the extent to which individuals have access to educational and economic opportunity. By contrast, in countries where religious devotion is valued over economic standing, mobility may depend upon individuals’ access to religious rituals and shows of piety. In different countries or regions, the extent to which individuals have social mobility depends upon different factors. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.04%3A_Social_Mobility/9.4A%3A_Social_Mobility.txt |
Economic inequality (also known as the gap between rich and poor) consists of disparities in the distribution of wealth and income.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the causes of economic inequality
Key Points
• Economic inequality refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries.
• Inequality is most often measured using the Gini coefficient, a statistic used to demonstrate the dispersion of wealth in a group.
• Both the capitalist market and government interventions can increase or decrease the level of inequality in a society.
Key Terms
• supply and demand: An economic model of price determination in a market based on the relative scarcity or abundance of goods and services.
• gini coefficient: A measure of the inequality of a statistical distribution, ranging from zero (total equality) to one (maximal inequality), used in various disciplines but especially in economics to compare incomes or wealth.
• Capitalist Market: Refers to an economic system in which supply and demand determines the cost of goods and wages for services.
Economic inequality (also known as the gap between rich and poor, income inequality, wealth disparity, or wealth and income differences) consists of disparities in the distribution of wealth (accumulated assets) and income. The term typically refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries. The issue of economic inequality is related to the ideas of equity: equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. There are various numerical indices for measuring economic inequality, but the most commonly used measure for the purposes of comparison is the Gini coefficient (also known as the Gini index or Gini ratio for Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini). The Gini coefficient is a statistical measure of the dispersal of wealth or income. A Gini coefficient of zero indicates that there is perfect equality—assets are equally divided between all people in the group. A Gini coefficient of one indicates that all of a group’s wealth is held by one individual. Most countries fall toward the middle of this range.
There are many reasons for economic inequality within societies, and they are often interrelated. Acknowledged factors that impact economic inequality include, but are not limited to:
• Inequality in wages and salaries;
• The income gap between highly skilled workers and low-skilled or no-skills workers;
• Wealth concentration in the hands of a few individuals or institutions;
• Labor markets;
• Globalization;
• Technological changes;
• Policy reforms;
• Taxes;
• Education;
• Computerization and growing technology;
• Racism;
• Gender;
• Culture;
• Innate ability
A major cause of economic inequality within modern economies is the determination of wages by the capitalist market. In the capitalist market, the wages for jobs are set by supply and demand. If there are many workers willing to do a job for a great amount of time, there is a high supply of labor for that job. If few people need that job done, there is low demand for that type of labor. When there is high supply and low demand for a job, it results in a low wage. Conversely, if there is low supply and high demand (as with particular highly skilled jobs), it will result in a high wage. The gap in wages produces inequality between different types of workers.
Apart from market-driven factors that affect wage inequality, government sponsored initiatives can also increase or decrease inequality. Social scientists and policy makers debate the relative merits and effectiveness of each approach to regulating inequality. Typical government initiatives to reduce economic inequality include:
• Public education: Increasing the supply of skilled labor and reducing income inequality due to education differentials.
• Progressive taxation: The rich are taxed proportionally more than the poor, reducing the amount of income inequality in society.
• Minimum wage legislation: Raising the income of the poorest workers
• Nationalization or subsidization of products: Providing goods and services that everyone needs cheaply or freely (such as food, healthcare, and housing), governments can effectively raise the purchasing power of the poorer members of society. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.04%3A_Social_Mobility/9.4B%3A_Growing_Gap_Between_Rich_and_Poor.txt |
In an open class system, people are ranked by achieved status, whereas in a closed class system, people are ranked by ascribed status.
Learning Objectives
• Differentiate between open and closed stratification systems
Key Points
• Social stratification describes the socioeconomic levels of a society as “layers,” with the wealthiest and most powerful citizens being at the top.
• An achievement-based economic system with social mobility and relations between classes is known as an open class system.
• By contrast, people in a closed class system have been confined to their ancestral occupations, and their social status has mostly been prescribed by birth. Most closed class systems are found in less industrialized countries.
• Ascribed status is the social position one is born into and personal characteristics beyond one’s control, such as race and gender. Achieved status is one’s social standing that depends on personal accomplishments.
Key Terms
• achieved status: A social status of a person that is acquired, such as being an Olympic athlete, being a criminal, or being a college professor.
• structural mobility: Opportunity for movement in social class that is attributable to changes in the social structure of a society, rather than to changes in an individual.
• ascribed status: The social status of a person that is given from birth or assumed involuntarily later in life.
Social stratification describes the socioeconomic levels of a society as “layers,” with the wealthiest and most powerful citizens being at the top. Typically, the top layer of society tends to have lots of property, as well as prestige and social influence.
Sociologists who study stratification have identified open class systems and compared them to closed class systems. The difference between these types of class systems are their structural mobility. In a class system that has high structural mobility, it’s easy to move around between social classes based on the way the society is structured, regardless of your individual achievements.
In an open class system, the hierarchical social status of a person is achieved through their effort. These types of class systems are achievement-based economic system with social mobility and relations between classes. Status based on family background, ethnicity, gender, and religion, which is also known as “ascribed status,” is less important. In an open class system, there is no distinct line between the classes, and there is a wide range of positions within each status level. Core industrial nations seem to have more of an ideal open class system than less industrialized countries, in which there are fewer opportunities for economic advancement.
Compared with industrialized open systems, pre-industrial societies have mostly been found to be closed class systems where there is low social mobility. People in such societies may be confined to their ancestral occupations, and their social status is largely prescribed by status at birth. A society in which traditional or religious caste systems dominate, opportunity for social mobility is unlikely.
Achieved status is a position gained based on merit or achievement (used in an open system). An open system describes a society with mobility between different social classes. Individuals can move up or down in the social rankings; this is unlike closed systems, where individuals are set in one social position for life despite their achievements. Ascribed status is based on who a person is, not what they can do. In closed class systems, people tend to be ranked by ascribed status. When ascribed status is used to determine social position, fixed roles develop, such as those of lord and serf in feudal Europe. Roles are assigned at birth, and there is little change over one’s lifetime. Social mobility is much more frequent in countries that use achievement as the basis for status. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.04%3A_Social_Mobility/9.4C%3A_Open_vs._Closed_Stratification_Systems.txt |
Social mobility can be vertical and horizontal, absolute and relative, and between generations.
Learning Objectives
• Describe several types of social mobility
Key Points
• Social mobility refers to the movement of individuals or groups in social position over time.
• Social mobility may refer to classes, ethnic groups, or entire nations, and may measure health status, literacy, or education; however, more commonly it refers to individuals or families, and to their change in income.
• Movement up or down the social hierarchy is called vertical social mobility.
• Movement between two equally ranked social positions is called horizontal mobility.
• Intra-generational mobility (“within” a generation) is defined as change in social status over a single lifetime.
• Absolute mobility measures whether (and by how much) living standards in a society have increased; this is often measured by what percentage of people have higher incomes than their parents.
• Relative mobility refers to how likely children are to move from their parents’ place in the social hierarchy.
Key Terms
• meritocratic: Used to describe a type of society where wealth, income, and social status are assigned through competition.
• vertical mobility: Movement of individuals or groups up or down from one socioeconomic level to another, often by changing jobs or through marriage.
• intra-generational mobility: Change in social status over a single lifetime.
Social mobility refers to the movement of individuals or groups in social position over time. Most commonly, social mobility refers to the change in wealth and social status of individuals or families. However, it may also refer to changes in health status, literacy rate, education, or other variables among groups such as classes, ethnic groups, or countries.
Social mobility typically refers to vertical mobility, which is the movement of individuals or groups up or down from one socioeconomic level to another, often by changing jobs or through marriage. In some instances though, social mobility is used to refer to horizontal mobility, which is the movement from one position to another within the same social level, as when someone changes between two equally prestigious occupations.
Social mobility can be intergenerational, such as when children attain a higher or lower status than their parents held. Other times, social mobility is intra-generational, meaning that a person changes status within their lifetime. A high level of intergenerational mobility is often considered praiseworthy, and can be seen as a sign of equality of opportunity in a society.
A distinction can be drawn between absolute social mobility, which refers to the total observed movement of people between classes, and relative social mobility, which is an estimate of the chance of upward or downward movement of a member of one social class in comparison with a member from another class. An example of absolute social mobility is when a region’s economic development provides education to a social group that previously did not have access to education, thus raising the group’s literacy level and socioeconomic status. Relative social mobility might refer to the opportunities presented to a middle class child born in a particular area of the United States, who might be predicted to attain a college level education and a maximum income of \$80,000, for example.
Social mobility can be enabled to varying extents by economic capital, cultural capital, human capital, and social capital. Economic capital includes a person’s financial and material resources, such as income and accumulated wealth. Cultural capital includes resources ranging from holding a graduate degree to having a grasp of a group’s customs and rituals, both of which may confer an advantage in job markets and social exchanges. Human capital refers to such individual traits as competence and work ethic, which may enable increased educational or professional attainment. Social capital includes the advantages conferred by one’s social network, such as access to professional opportunities and insider knowledge. These types of capital facilitate mobility by providing access to opportunities and the tools to acquire wealth and status.
Each society presents different opportunities for mobility depending on its system of values. For example, Western capitalist countries are generally meritocratic. In these countries, social standing is based on such personal attributes as educational attainment, income, and occupational prestige. Thus, the degree of mobility in Western capitalist states depends on the extent to which individuals have access to educational and economic opportunity. By contrast, in countries where religious devotion is valued over economic standing, mobility may depend upon individuals’ access to religious rituals and shows of piety. In different countries or regions, the extent to which individuals are socially mobile depends upon different factors. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.04%3A_Social_Mobility/9.4D%3A_Types_of_Social_Mobility.txt |
Strong social and economic mobility is considered part of American Dream, though there is relatively low social mobility in the U.S.
Learning Objectives
• Explain how the “glass ceiling” and other factors lower social mobility in the United States
Key Points
• Socioeconomic mobility in the United States refers to the movement of Americans from one social class or economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying.
• The ” glass ceiling ” effect is the upper limit on the mobility of minorities, such as African-Americans and women, that prevents them from occupying more than a very small percentage of high status positions.
• For women, another explanation for the glass ceiling effect in the American work force is the job- family trade off.
Key Terms
• The American Dream: The belief that with hard work, courage, and determination, anyone can prosper and achieve success.
• Socioeconomic Mobility: The movement of Americans from one social class or economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying.
• glass ceiling: An unwritten, uncodified barrier to further promotion or progression for a member of a specific demographic group.
Socioeconomic mobility in the United States refers to the movement of Americans from one social class or economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying. This “vertical” mobility can be the change in socioeconomic status between parents and children (“inter-generational”), or over the course of a lifetime (“intra-generational”). It typically refers to “relative mobility”—the chance that an American’s income or status will rise or fall compared to others in another income or status group; however, mobility can also be “absolute”— whether (and by how much) living standards in America have increased. The belief that there is significant social mobility in America, or in other words, that Americans can and do rise from humble origins to riches, is called the American Dream.
Researchers have found that in fact, there is relatively low social mobility in the United States. Explanations for this phenomenon include the following:
• The fact that affluent children have better access to superior schools in an economy where pay is higher for educated workers
• The low rate of unionization, which leads to lower wages among the least skilled workers
• Public health problems, like obesity and diabetes, which can limit education and employment
• The sheer size of the income gap between the rich and poor, which makes it harder to climb the proverbial income ladder because the rungs are far apart
• Poverty, since those with low income have significantly lower rates of mobility than middle and higher income individuals
Despite the increased presence of African Americans and women in the work force over the years, women and non-whites hold jobs with less rank, authority, opportunity for advancement, and pay than men and whites. The limit to women’s and minorities’ upward mobility is called the glass ceiling. The glass ceiling is thought to prevent women and minorities from occupying more than a very small percentage of top managerial positions. One reason for the persistence of the glass ceiling, even as explicitly discriminatory policies are eliminated, is the small proportion of high status individuals in the social networks of women and ethnic minorities. The more managers there are in an employee’s immediate work environment, the higher the employee’s chances of interacting and spending time with high status and high income employees. Consequently, the more likely these employees are to be drawn on for promotion.
For women, another explanation for the glass ceiling effect in the American work force is the job-family trade off. While both men and women feel that a conflict exists between work life and family life, women with children, particularly married women, are more likely to either temporarily leave the labor force or cut back on employment by using flex time, working part-time, or working only part of the year. Statistically, men have been willing to accept job conditions that women do not, such as working outside in extreme weather, working where you can become physically dirty on a regular basis, working extra hours, and other such undesirable conditions.
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One’s position in the the social class hierarchy has far-reaching effects on their health, family life, education, etc.
Learning Objectives
• Describe how socioeconomic status (SES) relates to the distributiuon of social opportunities and resources
Key Points
• While sociologists debate exactly how social classes are divided, there is substantial evidence that socioeconomic status is tied to tangible advantages and outcomes.
• Social class in the United States is a controversial issue, with social scientists disagreeing over models, definitions, and even the basic question of whether or not distinct classes exist.
• Many Americans believe in a simple three-class model that includes the rich or upper class, the middle class, and the poor or working class.
Key Terms
• hierarchy: Any group of objects ranked so that everyone but the topmost is subordinate to a specified group above it.
• socioeconomic: Of or pertaining to social and economic factors.
In the United States, a person’s social class has far-reaching consequences. Social class refers to the the grouping of individuals in a stratified hierarchy based on wealth, income, education, occupation, and social network (though other factors are sometimes considered). One’s position in the social class hierarchy may impact, for example, health, family life, education, religious affiliation, political participation, and experience with the criminal justice system.
Social class in the United States is a controversial issue, with social scientists disagreeing over models, definitions, and even the basic question of whether or not distinct classes exist. Many Americans believe in a simple three-class model that includes the rich or upper class, the middle class, and the poor or working class. More complex models that have been proposed by social scientists describe as many as a dozen class levels. Regardless of which model of social classes used, it is clear that socioeconomic status (SES) is tied to particular opportunities and resources. Socioeconomic status refers to a person’s position in the social hierarchy and is determined by their income, wealth, occupational prestige, and educational attainment.
While social class may be an amorphous and diffuse concept, with scholars disagreeing over its definition, tangible advantages are associated with high socioeconomic status. People in the highest SES bracket, generally referred to as the upper class, likely have better access to healthcare, marry people of higher social status, attend more prestigious schools, and are more influential in politics than people in the middle class or working class. People in the upper class are members of elite social networks, effectively meaning that they have access to people in powerful positions who have specialized knowledge. These social networks confer benefits ranging from advantages in seeking education and employment to leniency by police and the courts. Sociologists may dispute exactly how to model the distinctions between socioeconomic statuses, but the higher up the class hierarchy one is in America, the better health, educational, and professional outcomes one is likely to have.
9.5B: Physical Health
Social class is a strong social determinant of health.
Learning Objectives
• Describe how a low socioeconomic status (SES) can impact the health status of individuals
Key Points
• Social class is correlated to environmental hazards that increase one’s risk of contracting a disease or sustaining an injury; low access to fresh produce, exercise facilities, and preventative health programs are all environmental hazards that negatively impact health outcomes.
• Health inequality refers to the unequal distribution of environmental hazards and access to health services between demographic groups, including social classes, as well as to the disparate health outcomes experienced by these groups.
• In addition to environmental hazards, lower socioeconomic classes have lower levels of health insurance than the upper class. Much of this disparity can be explained by the tendency for lower status occupations to not provide benefits to employees.
Key Terms
• Environmental Hazards: Risk factors related to social and economic conditions that may produce negative health outcomes, including pollution and distribution of grocery stores, for example.
• health inequality: The unequal distribution of environmental health hazards and access to health services between demographic groups, including social classes.
• social determinants of health: The economic and social conditions that influence individual and group differences in health status.
A person’s social class has a significant impact on their physical health, their ability to receive adequate medical care and nutrition, and their life expectancy. While gender and race play significant roles in explaining healthcare inequality in the United States, socioeconomic status (SES) is the greatest social determinant of an individual’s health outcome. Social determinants of health are the economic and social conditions that influence individual and group differences in health status. Social determinants are environmental, meaning that they are risk factors found in one’s living and working conditions (including the distribution of income, wealth, influence, and power), rather than individual factors (such as behavioral risk factors or genetics). Social determinants can be used to predict one’s risk of contracting a disease or sustaining an injury, and can also indicate how vulnerable one is to the consequences of a disease or injury. Individuals of lower socioeconomic status have lower levels of overall health, less insurance coverage, and less access to adequate healthcare than those of higher SES.
Individuals with a low SES in the United States experience a wide array of health problems as a result of their economic position. They are unable to use healthcare as often as people of higher status and when they do, it is often of lower quality. Additionally, people with low SES tend to experience a much higher rate of health issues than those of high SES. Many social scientists hypothesize that the higher rate of illness among those with low SES can be attributed to environmental hazards. For example, poorer neighborhoods tend to have fewer grocery stores and more fast food chains than wealthier neighborhoods, increasing nutrition problems and the risk of conditions, such as heart disease. Similarly, poorer neighborhoods tend to have fewer recreational facilities and higher crime rates than wealthier ones, which decreases the feasibility of routine exercise.
In addition to having an increased level of illness, lower socioeconomic classes have lower levels of health insurance than the upper class. Much of this disparity can be explained by the tendency for middle and upper class people to work in professions that provide health insurance benefits to employees, while lower status occupations often do not provide benefits to employees. For many employees who do not have health insurance benefits through their job, the cost of insurance can be prohibitive. Without insurance, or with inadequate insurance, the cost of healthcare can be extremely high. Consequently, many uninsured or poorly insured individuals do not have access to preventative care or quality treatment. This group of people has higher rates of infant mortality, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and disabling physical injuries than are seen among the well insured.
Health inequality refers to the unequal distribution of environmental health hazards and access to health services between demographic groups, including social classes. For example, poor and affluent urban communities in the United States are geographically close to each other and to hospitals. Still, the affluent communities are more likely to have access to fresh produce, recreational facilities for exercise, preventative healthcare programs, and routine medical visits. Consequently, affluent communities are likely to have better health outcomes than nearby impoverished ones. The role of socioeconomic status in determining access to healthcare results in heath inequality between the upper, middle, and lower or working classes, with the higher classes having more positive health outcomes. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.05%3A_The_Impacts_of_Social_Class/9.5A%3A_Consequences_of_Social_Class.txt |
Different classes have different levels of access to treatment and encounter different mental health stressors.
Learning Objectives
• Define mental health and explain why it is regarded as a socially constructed concept
Key Points
• Mental health describes a person’s level of psychological well-being, or the presence/absence of mental disorder. Mental health can include one’s ability to enjoy life and demonstrate psychological resilience.
• Mental health is socially constructed and defined; it is determined by both scientific and cultural knowledge, and it is understood differently by various groups, institutions, and professions.
• The evaluation of which mental states can be considered healthy and which require medical intervention also varies by class.
Key Terms
• mental disorder: A psychological pattern, potentially reflected in behavior, generally associated with distress or disability, not considered part of normal development in a person’s culture.
• mental health: Emotional well-being, especially with reference to outlook on life, ability to cope with stress, or the absence of a mental disorder.
Mental health describes a level of psychological well-being or the presence/absence of a mental disorder. From the perspective of “positive psychology” or “holism,” mental health may include an individual’s ability to enjoy life and to demonstrate psychological resilience when confronted with challenges. The World Health Organization defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community. ”
What counts as healthy enjoyment and resilience depends upon one’s class perspective. Members of different classes encounter different stressors—lower class people likely face more financial stress as it pertains to day-to-day sustenance and well-being, while upper class people might experience stress from the intense social pressures associated with elite circles. The evaluation of which mental states can be considered healthy and which require medical intervention also varies by class.
Mental health is a socially constructed and socially defined concept; different societies, groups, cultures, institutions, and professions have very different ways of conceptualizing its nature and causes, determining what is mentally healthy, and deciding what interventions are appropriate. Definitions of mental health depend on cultural understandings in addition to biological and neurological findings. Members of different social classes often hold different views on mental health. Similarly, different social classes have different levels of access to mental health interventions and to information about mental health. Thus, the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders varies widely by social class.
9.5D: Family Life
Family life, including marriage, childbearing and household composition are strongly influenced by social class.
Learning Objectives
• Give examples for effects of social class on marriage, birth rates, and family composition
Key Points
• In the United States, the probability of a first marriage ending is substantially higher for couples with low socioeconomic statuses than for those in the middle or upper class.
• Globally, the birth rate in countries with large impoverished populations is much higher than in wealthier countries.
• In nations with high levels of fertility, upper class individuals tend to have more children than their lower class peers, while in nations with low levels of fertility, upper class families exhibit even lower fertility than average.
• Social class has both a cause and an effect relationship with family composition, and lower social class is often correlated with one-parent households.
Key Terms
• birth rate: The birth rate is typically the rate of births in a population over time.
• Family Life: A general term that refers to marriage and childbearing patterns, household composition and home stability.
• overpopulation: A situation which occurs when the number of occupants of an area exceeds the ability of that area to provide for those occupants.
Family life – marriage and childbearing patterns, household composition, and home stability – are strongly influenced by social class. In the United States, the probability of a first marriage ending is substantially higher for couples with low socioeconomic statuses than for those in the middle or upper class. Research shows that the higher rates of divorce for individuals in lower social classes can often be attributed to the greater financial stress these couples face, though factors like class expectations can also play a role.
Globally, the birth rate in countries with large impoverished populations is much higher than in wealthier countries, indicating that income and wealth play a role in shaping family structures. Demographers have identified a direct relationship between average number of children per household and the economic development of a nation. Today, less developed countries struggle with overpopulation while many governments in developed countries are instituting policies to deal with low birth rates. In nations with high levels of fertility, upper class individuals tend to have more children than their lower class peers. In nations with low levels of fertility, upper class families exhibit even lower fertility than average.
Social class has both a cause and an effect relationship with family composition. For example, single-parent households are likely to have a lower social class because they violate social norms. At the same time, single-parent families can contribute to financial and social instability. A single parent will often face higher costs (in the form of paid childcare), lower earnings (loss of the second parent’s income or loss of time spent at work), or both. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.05%3A_The_Impacts_of_Social_Class/9.5C%3A_Mental_Health.txt |
Educational attainment is tied to social class, with upper class individuals acquiring higher degrees from more prestigious schools.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss three factors contributing to educational inequality
Key Points
• Those in high social classes are likely to have greater educational attainment than those in low social classes.
• Educational inequality is also perpetuated by legacy admission.
• Because members of high social classes tend to be better educated and have higher incomes, they are more able to provide educational advantages to their children as well.
• Educational inequality is one factor that perpetuates the class divide across generations.
Key Terms
• educational attainment: Educational attainment is a term commonly used by statisticians to refer to the highest degree of education an individual has completed.
• private school: A fee-charging private or independent school.
• legacy student: A student who is admitted to a school (often a college or university), primarily because one or both of their parents are alumni of the same institution.
Education is a major component of social class, both directly and indirectly. Directly, individuals from higher social classes are more likely to have the means to attend more prestigious schools, and are therefore more likely to receive higher educations. Indirectly, individuals who benefit from such higher education are more likely to land prestigious jobs, and in turn, higher salaries. Just as education and social class are closely intertwined, stratification in education contributes to stratification in social class.
Educational attainment refers to the level of schooling a person completes — for instance, high school, some college, college, or a graduate degree. Upper class individuals are likely to attend schools of higher quality and of greater prestige than those attended by their lower class counterparts. Because members of high social classes tend to be better educated and have higher incomes, they are able to offer greater educational advantages, such as private schooling, to their children as well.
Upper-class parents are better able to send their children not only to exclusive private schools, but also to public state-funded schools. Such schools are likely to be of higher quality in affluent areas than in impoverished ones, since they are funded by property taxes within the school district. Wealthy areas will provide more property taxes as revenue, which leads to higher quality schools. Educational inequality is one factor that perpetuates the class divide across generations.
Such educational inequality is further reinforced by legacy admission, the preference given by educational institutions to applicants who are related to alumni of that institution. Germane to to university and college admissions (particularly in the United States), this practice emerged after World War I, primarily in response to the resulting immigrant influx. Ivy League institutions admit roughly 10% to 30% of students from each incoming class based on this factor.
9.5F: Religion
Social class is associated with individuals’ religious affiliations and practices but not with religiosity itself.
Learning Objectives
• Explain how social class relates to religious affiliation, denomination and religiosity
Key Points
• Social class is an indicator of religious affiliation, with upper class members concentrated in formal denominations and lower class members concentrated in informal denominations.
• Social class is not an indicator of religiosity; members of each social class practice their faiths with a range of intensities.
• Income, and therefore social class, is related to an individual’s denomination. Religion is also strongly linked to level of education.
Key Terms
• Religious Affiliation: The measure of which religious denomination a person identifies with or practices
• religiosity: An index of how strongly religious a person is
Social class, measured by socioeconomic status, is associated with individuals’ religious affiliations and practices. This affiliation has more to do with how religion is practiced rather than degree of religiosity. Members of lower classes tend to be affiliated with more fundamentalist religions and sect-like groups. Members of the middle class tend to belong to more formal churches. For example, American Presbyterians and Episcopalians (two highly formal Protestant denominations), tend to have above average socioeconomic statuses. Methodists and Lutherans (two moderately formal Protestant denominations) tend to have about average SES. Baptists and members of Protestant fundamentalist sects (which tend to be decentralized and informal) have below average SES. Variations in SES across denomination reveal a correlation between religious affiliation and social class.
Social class is not significantly correlated to religiosity, an index of how strongly religious a person is. Religiosity is measured by tracking frequency of church attendance, church group involvement, frequency of prayer, and other such markers of strength of religious practice. Members of each social class show a range of religiosity.
On the other hand, income, and therefore social class, is related to an individual’s denomination. When one looks at average income by religion, there are clear differences. The highest-earning religion on average is Judaism, with an average income of \$72,000 in 2000. This is dramatically higher than average; the next highest-earning denomination is Unitarianism at \$56,000. Jehovah’s Witness, Church of God, and Seventh Day Adventists are at the bottom of the income distribution, with \$24,000, \$26,000, and \$31,000 respectively.
Religion is also linked with education. 72% of Unitarian and 67% of Hindu adherents are college graduates, while only 12% of Jehovah’s Witness and 15% of Church of God members graduated from college.
9.5G: Politics
The higher one’s social class, the higher their levels of political participation and political influence.
Learning Objectives
• Evaluate how social class impacts political participation and political influence
Key Points
• Political office holders tend to be of high socioeconomic status, furthering the impact of class on American politics.
• Wealthy, well-educated Americans are more likely to vote and to donate money to politicians than lower class individuals are.
• Those who vote as members of a social class can be said to be participating in identity politics.
Key Terms
• Political Influence: The extent to which one’s political participation achieves its desired results, or the amount of power a political actor has to achieve his or her will.
• Political Participation: A measure of whether or not a person votes in elections, donates to campaigns, or attends public forums where decisions are made.
Social class impacts one’s level of political participation and political influence. Political participation refers to whether or not a person votes in elections, donates to campaigns, or attends public forums where decisions are made, such as town meetings or city council meetings, for example. Political influence refers to the extent to which one’s political participation achieves its desired results. For example, if one attends a public forum, is their opinion likely to be heard, or if they donate money, is a politician likely to support their desired policy?
Wealthy, well-educated Americans are more likely to vote and to donate money to politicians than lower class individuals. This trend means that middle and upper class individuals have greater political participation and greater political influence than those in lower positions. Additionally, higher status people are more likely to hold political positions than lower class people. An illustration of this is the presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004. Both had millions of dollars of accumulated wealth, and they had higher degrees from Harvard and Yale, respectively.
Those who vote as members of a social class can be said to be participating in identity politics. Identity politics is a phenomenon that arose first at the radical margins of liberal democratic societies in which human rights are recognized, and the term is not usually used to refer to dissident movements within single-party or authoritarian states. Some groups have combined identity politics and Marxist social class analysis and class consciousness. During the 1980s, the politics of identity became very prominent and was linked with new social movement activism. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.05%3A_The_Impacts_of_Social_Class/9.5E%3A_Education.txt |
Criminal justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at deterring and mitigating crime.
Learning Objectives
• Describe how the administration of punishment has changed throughout history
Key Points
• When a person is suspected of violating a law, they are processed through the criminal justice system.
• The criminal justice system includes law enforcement (such as police or sheriffs), the courts, and corrections authorities (such as prison wardens and social workers).
• Legislation can attempt to refocus and restructure the criminal justice system in the United States, as when the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice issued recommendations to improve the efficacy of criminal justice.
• These reforms reflected a change in the purpose of the criminal justice system. Historically it had been used as a way to deter crime and punish criminals, but now has the added goal of rehabilitating offenders.
Key Terms
• court: A tribunal established for the administration of justice, through which legal issues are adjudicated.
• adjudication: The process of reaching a judgment or sentence in a legal proceeding.
• law enforcement: The various government agencies involved in the prevention of crime and the apprehension of criminals.
Criminal justice is the system of practices and government institutions directed at upholding social control, deterring, and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts. The American criminal justice system consists of three main parts: (1) enforcement; (2) adjudication; and (3) corrections. These distinct agencies are the principal means of maintaining the rule of law within society.
The first contact an offender has with the criminal justice system is usually with law enforcement, most often the police who investigate a suspected violation and make an arrest. Next, the courts carry out adjudication or the legal processing of offenders. The courts serve as the venue where disputes are settled and justice is administered. Depending on the offense, either a judge or a jury determines whether the suspect violated the law and what their punitive sentence will be. If found guilty by the court, offenders are then turned over to correctional authorities. Correctional authorities may include prison wardens or social workers, depending on the type of offense.
Like all other aspects of criminal justice, the administration of punishment has taken many different forms throughout history. Early on, when civilizations lacked the resources necessary to construct and maintain prisons, exile and execution were the primary forms of punishment. Historically shame punishments have also been used as forms of censure.
The most publicly visible form of punishment in the modern era is the prison. Prisons may serve as detention centers for prisoners after trial. Jails are used for containment of the accused before trial. Early prisons were used primarily to sequester criminals and little thought was given to living conditions within their walls. In America, the Quaker movement is commonly credited with establishing the idea that prisons should be used to reform criminals. This can also be seen as a critical moment in the debate regarding the purpose of punishment.
In the United States, criminal justice policy has been guided by the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, which issued a ground-breaking report titled “The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society. ” This report made more than 200 recommendations as part of a comprehensive approach toward crime prevention. Some of those recommendations found their way into the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. The commission advocated a “systems” approach to criminal justice, with improved coordination among law enforcement, courts, and correctional agencies. The commission defined the criminal justice system as the means for society to “enforce the standards of conduct necessary to protect individuals and the community. ”
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Poverty is the condition of not having access to material resources, income, or wealth.
Learning Objectives
• Assess how poverty relates to social mobility
Key Points
• The United States officially defines poverty using the poverty line. The poverty line is set at an income level that is three times the approximate cost of a subsistence level food budget.
• Poverty can also refer to the lack of opportunity to improve one’s standard of living (or poor life chances ).
• The term ” near poverty ” refers to earnings that are above the poverty line, but by no more than 25%.
• Social mobility describes a person’s flexibility to change their economic status.
• If there is a high level of social mobility, it is relatively easy for people to escape poverty; if social mobility is low, it is very challenging for people to escape poverty.
Key Terms
• The Poverty Line: The threshold of poverty, below which one’s income does not cover necessities.
• Near Poverty: The classification “near poverty” describes a demographic group in the United States that earns 25% above the poverty line.
Poverty describes the state of not having access to material resources, wealth, or income. The United States officially defines poverty using the poverty line. The poverty line is set at an income level that is three times the approximate cost of a subsistence level food budget. This definition has been in use in the United States to track demographic changes and allocate welfare aid since the 1960s.
“Near poverty” is the term for an income level that is just above the poverty line; it refers to incomes that are no more than 25% above the poverty line.
“Relative poverty” refers to economic disadvantage compared to wealthier members of society, whereas ” absolute poverty ” refers to a family (or an individual) with an income so low that they cannot afford basic necessities of survival, such as food and shelter.
Poverty may correspond not only to lack of resources, but to the lack of opportunity to improve one’s standard of living and acquire resources. “Life chances” is a term used to describe someone’s access to marketplace resources—essentially, how likely it is in their environment that they might be able to find employment or have a social safety net. Someone who is living in poverty but has high life chances may be able to improve their economic standing, but someone with low life chances will likely have a consistently low standard of living. The term for a person’s ability to change their economic status in a society is known as “social mobility. ”
If there is a high level of social mobility, it is relatively easy for people to leave poverty. Easy access to higher education and prevalence of well-paying jobs contribute to social mobility. While some factors that contribute to poverty are the result of individual choices, such as dropping out of school or committing a crime, other factors affect poverty that are beyond individual control. In the United States, minorities and women are more likely to be living in poverty. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.06%3A_Poverty/9.6A%3A_Poverty.txt |
Poverty is defined by deprivation, and can be measured with economic or social indicators.
Learning Objectives
• Compare the differences between absolute and relative poverty
Key Points
• Economic measures of poverty include access to material needs, typically necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, and safe drinking water, measures of income, or measure of wealth.
• Social measures of poverty include access to information, education, health care, or political power.
• Absolute poverty refers to a fixed threshold based on access to income and material resources, while relative inequality is measured using a region’s median income and standard of living and therefore reflects income inequality.
• Relative poverty explains poverty as socially defined and dependent on social context. Usually, relative poverty is measured as the percentage of the population with income less than some fixed proportion of median income.
Key Terms
• World Bank: A group of five financial organizations whose purpose is economic development and the elimination of poverty.
• absolute poverty: A measure of poverty based on a set standard that is consistent over time and between countries, referring to the ability of individuals or groups to meet their basic needs.
• relative poverty: A measure of wealth inequality, describing an individual or group’s wealth relative to an other individual or group.
Economic measures of poverty focus on material needs, typically including the necessities of daily living such as food, clothing, shelter, or safe drinking water. Poverty in this sense may be understood as a condition in which a person or community is lacking in the basic needs for a minimum standard of well-being, particularly as a result of a persistent lack of income.
Social measures of poverty may include lack of access to information, education, health care, or political power. Poverty may also be understood as an aspect of inequitable social relationships, experienced as social exclusion, dependency, and/or diminished capacity to participate in society.
According to the World Bank, definitions of poverty include low income and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life.
Poverty is usually measured as either absolute or relative poverty. Absolute poverty refers to a set standard which is consistent over time and between countries. The World Bank uses this definition of poverty to label extreme poverty as living on less than US \$1.25 per day, and moderate poverty as less than \$2 or \$5 a day.
Relative poverty explains poverty as socially defined and dependent on social context. Usually, relative poverty is measured as the percentage of the population with income less than some fixed proportion of median income. Relative poverty measures are used as official poverty rates in several developed countries and are measured according to several different income inequality metrics, including the Gini coefficient and the Theil Index. Measurements are usually based on a person’s yearly income and frequently take no account of total wealth. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.06%3A_Poverty/9.6B%3A_Measuring_Poverty.txt |
Sociologists take two opposing approaches to explaining economic stratification: structural-functionalism and conflict theory.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the critiques of structural-functionalist approaches to social stratification
Key Points
• According to structural-functionalists, stratification and inequality are actually constructive phenomena that benefit society —specifically, that the privileges attached to high- status incentive motivated, qualified people to work to achieve those positions.
• According to this logic, inequality ensures that the most functionally important jobs are filled by the best qualified people.
• Conflict theorists argue that stratification is dysfunctional and harmful to society, and that it results in competition between the rich and the poor as individuals act for their own economic advantage.
• Conflict theorists hold that competition and inequality are not inevitable but are created and maintained by people trying to gain access to scarce resources.
Key Terms
• social stratification: The hierarchical arrangement of social classes, or castes, within a society.
• structural-functionalist approach: A sociological approach to poverty that maintains that all parts of society (even poverty) contribute in some way or another to the larger system’s stability.
• conflict-theory approach: A sociological theory of poverty that argues that stratification is dysfunctional and harmful to society but persists because it benefits the rich and powerful.
Two classic sociological approaches to poverty and social stratification are structural-functionalism and conflict theory.
The structural-functionalist approach to stratification asks the question: what function or purpose does stratification serve? The theory’s answer is that all parts of society, even poverty, contribute in some way or another to the larger system’s stability. According to structural-functionalists, stratification and inequality are actually constructive phenomena that benefit society: they ensure that the best people are at the top of the hierarchy and those who are less worthy are at the bottom. Those at the top are given power and rewards because of high abilities, and the high rewards exist to provide incentive for qualified people to do the most important work in high status occupations. According to this logic, inequality ensures that the most functionally important jobs are filled by the best qualified people.
The conflict-theory approach offers a critique of structural-functionalism. First, the critique asserts that it is difficult to determine the functional importance of any job, as a system of interdependence makes every position necessary to the functioning of society. Second, this approach assumes that the system of stratification is fair and rational, and that the ‘best’ people end up on top because of their superiority. But, according to conflict theorists, in reality the system does not work so easily or perfectly and there are barriers to qualified people ascending the hierarchy.
In contrast to structural-functionalists, conflict theorists argue that stratification is dysfunctional and harmful in society. According to this theory, stratification benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor—those in high-status positions continually build on their wealth, only further entrenching the gap between high-status and low-status people. For example, many wealthy families pay low wages to nannies to care for their children, gardeners to tend to their yards, and maids to clean their homes. Conflict theorists believe that this competitive system, together with structural barriers to upward mobility ends up creating and perpetuating stratification systems. Conflict theorists hold that competition and inequality are not inevitable but are created and maintained by people. Meanwhile, structural-functionalists rebut that people do not always act solely out of economic self-interest. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.06%3A_Poverty/9.6C%3A_Explaining_Poverty-_The_Sociological_Debate.txt |
Social exclusion occurs when individuals and communities are blocked from rights and opportunities that are available to others.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the causes of social exclusion
Key Points
• Social exclusion is distinct from poverty. Poverty is a distributional outcome, whereas exclusion can be defined as the process of declining participation, solidarity, and access to opportunities.
• Unemployment or lack of transportation can be causes of social exclusion.
• The problem of social exclusion is usually tied to that of equal opportunity, as some people are more subject to such exclusion than others.
• Sociologists see strong links between crime and social exclusion in industrialized societies such as the United States.
Key Terms
• equal opportunity: equal opportunity is a stipulation that all people should be given access to opportunities for advancement and treated similarly when competing for jobs, housing, and other resources.
• Social exclusion: processes through which individuals and entire communities of people are systematically blocked from rights, opportunities, and resources that are normally available to members of society and that are key to social integration.
• due process: a legal concept where a person is ensured all legal rights when deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for a given reason.
Social exclusion is a concept used in many parts of the world to characterize forms of social disadvantage. It refers to processes through which individuals and entire communities of people are systematically blocked from rights, opportunities, and resources that are normally available to members of society and that are key to social integration. These include housing, employment, healthcare, civic engagement, democratic participation, and legal due process.
Poverty and exclusion are two different concepts. Poverty is a distributional outcome, whereas exclusion can be defined as process of declining participation, solidarity, and access. It is quite difficult to measure social exclusion quantitatively, as social exclusion is relative, sensitive, and variable.
The causes of social exclusion vary from country to country, but there are general causes that social scientists have identified. In modern industrialized societies, paid work is not only the principal source of income with which to buy goods and services, but is also the fount of individuals’ identity and feelings of self-worth. Therefore, unemployment is considered a cause of social exclusion. In some circumstances, lack of transportation can lead to social exclusion. For instance, if lack of access to public transport or a vehicle prevents a person from getting to a job, training course, job center, school, or entertainment venue they may be shut out from opportunities.
The problem of social exclusion is usually tied to that of equal opportunity, as some people are more subject to exclusion than others. Marginalization of certain groups is a problem even in many economically developed countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States, where the majority of the population enjoys considerable economic and social opportunities.
Sociologists see strong links between crime and social exclusion in industrialized societies including the United States. Growing crime rates may reflect the fact that an increasing number of people do not feel valued or included in the societies in which they live. Socially excluded populations may not benefit from the avenues for income and advancement that are open to others, so they resort to illegal means of obtaining resources. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.06%3A_Poverty/9.6D%3A_Social_Exclusion.txt |
Poverty operates in a dynamic cycle, with the effects of poverty increasing the likelihood that it will be transferred between generations.
Learning Objectives
• Explain the cyclical impact of the consequences of poverty
Key Points
• Poor people are less likely than others to have financial capital, education, and social capital (connections to people with specialized knowledge or in powerful positions). Without these resources, poverty -stricken individuals experience disadvantages which in turn increase their poverty.
• The cycle of poverty can trap families in poverty for generations, and often becomes widespread when economies undergo restructuring from manufacturing-based economies to service-based economies.
• Low-quality education, hunger, and homelessness can all perpetuate poverty by creating barriers to individual economic advancement.
Key Terms
• economic restructuring: Economic restructuring refers to the phenomenon of shifting between two types of economies, such as from a manufacturing to service economy or agricultural to manufacturing economy.
• Cycle of poverty: The idea that poverty operates in a dynamic cycle, with the effects of poverty increasing the likelihood that it will be transferred between generations.
The basic premise of the poverty cycle the idea that poverty is a dynamic process—its effects may also be its causes. In economics, the cycle of poverty has been defined as a phenomenon where poor families become trapped in poverty for at least three generations. These families have either limited or nonexistent social and economic resources. There are many disadvantages that collectively work in a circular process to make it virtually impossible for individuals to break the cycle of poverty. Definitionally, poor people are less likely to have financial capital, education, and social capital (connections to people with specialized knowledge or in powerful positions). Without these resources, poverty-stricken individuals experience disadvantages that, in turn, increase their poverty.
Sociologists have argued that the economic restructuring of the U.S. and other developed nations from manufacturing to service-based economies has led to chronic joblessness in inner cities. In a service economy, there is a higher proportion of high-skill jobs than in a manufacturing economy. Thus, people who have lost their manufacturing positions are unqualified for the jobs available in the new economy. This disparity between available jobs and workforce skill is a driver of cyclical poverty.
Research shows that schools with students who perform worse than the norm are also those hiring the least-qualified teachers, because teachers tend to work in schools in the area where they grew up—teachers who are educated in poor schools come back to teach in the same low quality schools, keeping the schools from improving. Students who attend these low quality schools graduate with little human capital (skills and knowledge), and are thus unqualified for high status occupations. In this way, inadequate or lack of education can perpetuate poverty.
Additionally, those living in poverty suffer disproportionately from hunger, or in extreme cases starvation, and also exhibit disproportionately high rates of disease. These illnesses can be disabling, preventing people in poverty from working in certain occupations or at certain capacities, thus reducing one’s opportunities to improve their social and economic status.
Finally, poverty increases the risk of homelessness. Slum-dwellers, who make up a third of the world’s urban population, live in poverty no better, if not worse, than rural people, who are the traditional victims of poverty in the developing world. People who are homeless or live in slums have low access to neighborhood resources, high status social contacts, or basic services such as a phone line. This limits their ability to improve their economic position, again perpetuating poverty. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.06%3A_Poverty/9.6E%3A_The_Dynamics_of_Poverty.txt |
The feminization of poverty refers to the fact that women represent a disproportionate share of the world’s poor.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss three causes of female poverty
Key Points
• The feminization of poverty is not only a consequence of lack of income, but is also the result of the deprivation of opportunities and gender biases present in both societies and governments.
• Women’s increasing share of poverty is related to the rising incidence of lone mother households.
• Women in poverty have reduced access to health care services and resources.
• The education of women and children, especially girls, can create greater opportunities for women to lift themselves out of poverty and increase their social position.
• Women’s jobs are more likely than men’s to be forms of informal employment, which takes place in small, unregistered enterprises and is not protected by government regulation.
Key Terms
• informal employment: Employment that takes place in small, unregistered enterprises without external regulation.
• formal employment: Employment that is government regulated, such that workers are insured a wage and certain rights.
• lone mother households: Households where a single female acts as the sole head of household; in lone mother households, there is usually no adult male present.
• feminization of poverty: a phenomenon in which women represent disproportionate percentages of the world’s poor
The feminization of poverty describes a phenomenon in which women represent a disproportionate percentage of the world’s poor. This trend is not only a consequence of lack of income, but also of lack of opportunities due to gender biases and fixed gender roles in some societies. Gender biases often deprive women of opportunities to independently pursue education or careers and are often linked to the expectation that women are responsible for childbearing and childrearing. Women’s increasing share of poverty is related to the rising incidence of lone mother households.
Many factors place women at higher risk of poverty than their male counterparts. Though low income is the primary cause of female poverty, there are many interrelated sources of this problem. Lack of income deprives women of basic needs, such as food and shelter, and limits their opportunities for advancement. As women disproportionately earn less income than men, they are deprived of basic education and healthcare, which lowers their lifetime earning potential. The responsibilities associated with motherhood further limit women’s economic attainment. Lone mother households, or households without a second parent or guardian, are the households with the highest risk of poverty. Female headed households (where no male is present) are most susceptible to poverty because they have fewer income earners to provide financial support within the household. Lone mother households relate to gender inequality issues as women are more susceptible to poverty and lack essential life needs in comparison to men.
Women in poverty also have reduced access to healthcare services and resources. Partly due to the toll of childbearing, women are disproportionately afflicted with poor health outcomes. Poor health reduced women’s ability to earn income, and, thus, is a key factor increasing and perpetuating household poverty. Increasing health services to women could, therefore, mitigate the feminization of poverty. The education of women and children, especially girls, can create greater opportunities for women to lift themselves out of poverty and increase their social position. Countries with strong gender discrimination and social hierarchies limit women’s access to basic education. Even within the household, girls’ education is often sacrificed to allow male siblings to attend school.
Employment opportunities are limited for women worldwide. Women are often barred from materially controlling their environment due to unequal access to profitable and fulfilling occupational opportunities. Employment can be divided into informal and formal occupations. Formal employment is government regulated, and workers are insured a wage and certain rights. Informal employment takes place in small, unregistered enterprises. A large proportion of women are employed in informal workplaces, reducing the regulation of their employment. This makes it more difficult for women to address workplace grievances and ensure safe and legal working conditions. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/09%3A_Stratification_Inequality_and_Social_Class_in_the_U.S./9.06%3A_Poverty/9.6F%3A_The_Feminization_of_Poverty.txt |
Federal assistance is defined as any program that directly assists the public in areas, such as education, health, and public welfare.
Learning Objectives
• Explain the organizational structure of federal assistance in the United States
Key Points
• The assistance is provided and administered by federal government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through special programs to recipients.
• Programs administer assistance by “granting” or “awarding” a portion of the assistance to recipients. These are called federal grants or awards.
• Recipients of federal grants include state governments, local governments, territories and possessions, Native American tribal governments, non-profit organizations and institutions, and private individuals.
Key Terms
• Earmark Grants: Federal funds that have been designated for specific projects in appropriations of funding for general programs.
• Formula Grants: Grants include a specified formula, as a rule, that tells potential recipient governments precisely how they can calculate the quantity of aid to which they are entitled under the provisions of law.
• single audit: An annual examination of an aid recipient’s operations and records in order to determine whether or not the recipient complied with laws and regulations applicable to the assistance received.
In the United States, federal assistance is defined as any federal program, project, service, or activity provided by the federal government that directly assists or benefits the American public in the areas of education, health, public safety, public welfare, and public works, among others. The assistance is provided and administered by federal government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through special programs to recipients.
In order to provide federal assistance in an organized manner, the federal government provides assistance through federal agencies. It is the agency’s responsibility to adequately provide assistance, as well as manage, account, and monitor the responsible use of federal funds which were utilized for that assistance. The agencies then supply the assistance to beneficiaries, such as states, hospitals, poverty-stricken families, etc., through hundreds of individual programs.
Programs administer assistance by “granting” or “awarding” a portion of the assistance to recipients. These are called federal grants or awards. Recipients must first apply for the award directly to the federal agency which administers the program. The agency must then determine the amount of assistance to be awarded and notifies the recipient of the award. Given the enormous size of federal assistance provided, the Federal government has designed different types of grants, each with its own unique way of awarding and operating. These include project grants, formula grants, and earmark grants.
Due to the extensive amount of assistance provided by the federal government, the Federal agencies rely on numerous monitoring activities performed by themselves, pass-through entities, and external sources. The most common monitoring procedure used is the single audit, which is an annual examination of a recipient’s operations and records in order to determine whether or not the recipient complied with laws and regulations applicable to the assistance received.
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Learning Objectives
• Interpret ”the ideology of race” based on examples from the text
While many people conflate the terms “race” and ” ethnicity,” these terms have distinct meanings for sociologists. The idea of race refers to superficial physical differences that a particular society considers significant, while ethnicity is a term that describes shared culture.
Social and Scientific Conceptions of Race
Historically, the concept of race has changed across cultures and eras. Race has been used as a classification system to categorize humans in a variety of ways: as large and distinct populations, as groups distinguished by phenotype (observable traits and behaviors), and as groups of differing geographic ancestry and ethnicity. In the past, theorists have posited categories of race based on various geographic regions, ethnicities, skin colors, and more. Their labels for racial groups have connoted regions (Mongolia and the Caucus Mountains, for instance) or denoted skin tones (black, white, yellow, and red, for example). It was assumed for centuries that race was based in biology and genetically distinguishable among different subgroups (e.g., African Americans, Caucasians, American Indians, etc.).
However, this typology of race developed during early racial science has fallen into disuse; over time the concept has become less connected with ancestral and family ties and more concerned with superficial physical characteristics. While biologists sometimes use the concept of race to make distinctions among sets of traits, others in the scientific community suggest that this idea of race is often used in a naive or simplistic way.
Now, race is far more widely accepted to be a social construction and therefore not distinguishable based on biology alone. Among humans, race has no taxonomic significance — all living humans belong to the same hominid subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, according to different folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Many scientists consider this sort of biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations in favor of other physical or behavioral distinctions.
Early Modern Conceptions of Race
The word “race” was originally used to refer to any nation or ethnic group. For example, the 13th century traveler Marco Polo used the term “Persian race”, to describe people inhabiting the territory of the nation-state Iran.
However, anthropologists only trace the current concept of “race,” along with many of the ideas now associated with the term, to the 16th and 17th centuries and the time of the Scientific Revolution. This era was one of European imperialism and colonization, during which new – often exploitive – political relations were established between Europeans and other cultures of the world. As Europeans encountered people from different parts of the world, they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups.
According to historian Milton Meltzer, the rise of the Atlantic slave trade created a further incentive to categorize human groups in order to justify the subordination of African slaves. Similarly, the tradition of hostility between the English and Irish was a powerful influence on early European thinking of the Irish as an inferior “race. ”
As Europeans began to sort themselves and others into groups based on physical appearance, they attributed to individual members of these groups certain behaviors and capacities that were supposedly deeply ingrained. These supposed physical, intellectual, behavioral, and moral differences soon became part of common folk belief.
From the 17th through the 19th centuries, the merging of folk beliefs about and scientific explanations of group differences produced what social anthropologist Audrey Smedley has called an “ideology of race. ” According to this ideology, races are primordial, natural, enduring and distinct. During this time, it was further argued that some groups may be the result of mixture between formerly distinct populations, but that careful study could distinguish the ancestral races that had combined.
Contemporary Uses of Racial Categories
Contemporary conceptions of race illuminate how far removed modern race understanding is from biological qualities. In modern society, some people who consider themselves “white” actually have more melanin (a pigment that determines skin color) in their skin than other people who identify as “black. ” In some countries, such as Brazil, class is more important than skin color in determining racial categorization. People with high levels of melanin in their skin may consider themselves “white” if they enjoy a middle-class lifestyle. On the other hand, someone with low levels of melanin in their skin might be assigned the identity of “black” if they have little education or money.
While race is largely understood to be a social construct, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination. Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroups as both racially defined and morally inferior. As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed. Racism today continues to contribute to the suffering of many people in the form of slavery, genocide, systemic oppression, and institutionalized discrimination.
Law enforcement officers often utilize race to profile suspects, a term commonly referred to as “racial profiling”. This use of racial categories is frequently criticized for perpetuating an outmoded understanding of human biological variation, and promoting stereotypes.
Key Points
• Phenotype refers to the composite observable traits and behaviors of an individual or group.
• Geneotype refers to a person’s genetic makeup.
• Among humans, race has no taxonomic significance — all living humans belong to the same hominid subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.
• An ” ideology of race,” formed through the merging of folk beliefs about group differences with scientific explanations of those differences, argued that races are primordial, natural, enduring and distinct.
Key Terms
• ideology of race: The belief that races are primordial, natural, enduring, and distinct, derived from folk beliefs and scientific explanations generated during the 17th-19th centuries.
• race: A large group of people distinguished from others on the basis of a common heritage or common physical characteristics, such as skin color and hair type.
• phenotype: Any observable characteristic of an organism, such as its morphological, developmental, biochemical or physiological properties, or its behavior. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.01%3A_Race/10.1A%3A_Race.txt |
Racial groups are sociologically, rather than biologically, different; that is to say, there is no “race” gene or set of genes.
Learning Objectives
• Recall what recent discoveries in genetics has revealed about the concept of race
Key Points
• Genetic studies reveal that the existence of geographic ancestral origin is more valid than a claim that socially-defined categories of races each have a distinct biological basis.
• While a person’s race can generally be visually determined, different racial groups do not in fact differ biologically in substantial ways.
• The significance of race is social, meaning that defining race in in biological terms is a product of cultural socialization.
Key Terms
• race: A large group of people distinguished from others on the basis of a common heritage or common physical characteristics, such as skin color and hair type.
• endogamy: The practice of marrying or being required to marry within one’s own ethnic, religious, or social group.
• allele: One of a number of alternative forms of the same gene occupying a given position on a chromosome.
People’s understanding of “race” emerged long before we knew anything about genetics. There are very few biological differences between the races and there is no “race” gene or set of genes to speak of.
Scientific Studies on Race and Genetics
The relationship between race and genetics has relevance for the ongoing controversies regarding race.
Ongoing genetic research has investigated how ancestral human populations migrated in the ancestral geographic environment into different geographic areas. Today it is possible to determine, by genetic analysis, the geographic ancestry of a person and the degree of ancestry from each region. Such analysis can pinpoint the migrational history of a person’s ancestors with a high degree of accuracy. Often, due to practices of group endogamy, allele frequencies cluster locally around kin groups and lineages, or by national, cultural, or linguistic boundaries – giving a detailed degree of correlation between genetic clusters and population groups when considering many alleles simultaneously.
Recent discoveries in genetics offer a means of categorizing race which is distinct from past methods, which were often based on very broad criteria corresponding to physical characteristics, such as skin color, and which do not correlate reliably with geographic ancestry. Some anthropologists, particularly those working with forensics, consider race to be a useful biological category as it is often possible to determine the racial category of a person by examining physical remains, although what is actually being identified is the geographical phenotype.
While a person’s race can generally be visually determined, different racial groups do not in fact differ biologically in substantial ways. In a December, 2003, Scientific American article, Bamshad and Olson, two geneticists working on mapping the human genome, concluded that “race” does not exist genetically. Rather, race is a social construct and a product of culture, not biology.
10.1C: Legal Definition of Race
Many governments provide legal definitions of race for purposes of census-taking and calculating budgets for governmental programs.
Learning Objectives
• Paraphrase the legal definition of race and how it is used in government and law enforcement in the U.S., the U.K., and France
Key Points
• The use of ” race ” as a broad, non-scientific description of general appearance is a common practice in law enforcement agencies around the world.
• Racial profiling refers to the use of an individual’s race or ethnicity by law enforcement personnel as a key factor in determining whether to engage in enforcement (e.g., make a traffic stop or arrest). The practice is controversial and is illegal in some nations.
• In an attempt to facilitate the job of law enforcement officers, the FBI employs the term “race” to summarize the general appearance of individuals whom they are attempting to apprehend.
Key Terms
• racial profiling: Racial profiling refers to the use of an individual’s race or ethnicity by law enforcement personnel as a key factor in deciding whether to engage in enforcement (e.g., make a traffic stop or arrest).
Legal Definition of Race
Many governments provide legal definitions of race for purposes of census-taking and calculating budgets for governmental programs such as those that promote equal opportunity employment. For instance, in the U.S. Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Census Bureau currently uses race and ethnicity as self-identification data items. In this system, the residents choose the race or races with which they most closely identify and indicate what their ethnic origin is (e.g., Latino).
The racial categories represent a social-political construct for the race or races that respondents consider themselves to be. OMB defines the concept of race as outlined for the U.S. census as not “scientific or anthropological” and takes into account “social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry”, using “appropriate scientific methodologies” that are not “primarily biological or genetic in reference. ” The race categories include both racial and national-origin groups.
Race and Law Enforcement
In an attempt to provide general descriptions that may facilitate the job of law enforcement officers seeking to apprehend suspects, the FBI employs the term “race” to summarize the general appearance (skin color, hair texture, eye shape, and other such easily noticed characteristics) of individuals whom they are attempting to apprehend. From the perspective of law enforcement officers, it is generally more important to arrive at a description that will readily suggest the general appearance of an individual than to make a scientifically valid categorization by DNA or other such means. Thus, in addition to assigning a wanted individual to a racial category, such a description will include: height, weight, eye color, scars, and other distinguishing characteristics.
British Police use a classification based on the ethnic background of British society, for example W1 (White-British), M1 (White and black Caribbean), and A1 (Asian-Indian). Some of the characteristics that constitute these groupings are biological and some are learned (cultural or linguistic) traits that are easy to notice.
In many countries, such as France, the state is legally banned from maintaining data based on race, so the police issue wanted notices to the public that include labels like “dark skin complexion. ”
Racial Profiling
Racial profiling refers to the use of an individual’s race or ethnicity by law enforcement personnel as a key factor in deciding whether to engage in enforcement (e.g. make a traffic stop or arrest). The practice is controversial and is illegal in some nations.
In the United States, the practice of racial profiling has been ruled to be both unconstitutional and a violation of civil rights. There is active debate regarding the cause of a marked correlation between the recorded crimes, punishments meted out, and the country’s populations. Many consider de facto racial profiling an example of institutional racism in law enforcement. The history of misuse of racial categories to impact adversely one or more groups and to offer protection and advantage to another has a clear impact on the larger debate. This debate is concerned with the legitimacy of the government using known phenotypical or genotypical characteristics tied to the presumed race of both victims and perpetrators. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.01%3A_Race/10.1B%3A_Race_and_Genetics.txt |
Most social scientists and biologists believe race is a social construct affecting sociopolitical, legal, and economic contexts.
Learning Objectives
• Identify two ways, other than “race,” that social researchers conceptualize and analyze human variation
Key Points
• A social construct refers to something that does not have a basis in the natural world but is an artificial distinction created by humans.
• Some researchers now conceptualize and analyze human variation in terms of populations, dismissing racial classifications altogether.
• Many social scientists have replaced the word ” race ” with the word ” ethnicity ” to refer to groups that self-identify based on shared religion, nationality, or culture.
• Ethnicity refers to groups that self-identify based on shared beliefs, culture, ancestry, and history.
Key Terms
• population: A count of the number of residents within a political or geographical boundary, such as a town, a nation, or the world or of the number of individuals belonging to a particular group.
• ethnicity: The identity of a group of people having common racial, national, religious, or cultural origins.
• social construct: Social constructs are generally understood to be the by-products of countless human choices rather than laws resulting from divine will or nature.
Debates continue in and among academic disciplines as to how race should be understood. Most social scientists and biologists believe race is a social construct, meaning it does not have a basis in the natural world but is simply an artificial distinction created by humans.
As a result of this understanding, some researchers have turned from conceptualizing and analyzing human variation by race to doing so in terms of populations, dismissing racial classifications altogether. In the face of the increasing rejection of race as a valid classification scheme, many social scientists have replaced the word race with the word “ethnicity” to refer to self-identifying groups based on shared religion, nationality, or culture.
History
Following the World War II, alongside empirical and conceptual problems with “race,” evolutionary and social scientists were acutely aware of how beliefs about race had been used to justify discrimination, apartheid, slavery, and genocide. This questioning gained momentum in the 1960s during the United States ‘ civil rights movement and the emergence of numerous anti-colonial movements worldwide. Many academics and researchers across disciplines, therefore, came to the conclusion that race itself is a social construct.
As anthropologists and other evolutionary scientists have shifted away from the language of race to the term “population” to talk about genetic differences, historians, cultural anthropologists and other social scientists have accordingly re-conceptualized the term “race” as exclusively a cultural category or social construct. Many social scientists have also replaced the word race with the word “ethnicity” to refer to self-identifying groups based on beliefs concerning shared culture, ancestry and history.
Race as a Social Construct
The social construction of race has developed within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause of major race-related issues. While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real, material effects in housing discrimination, in the legal process, in policing practices, in education, and many other domains of society.
Sociologists Omi and Winant’s theories of racial formation describe how “race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies. ” The meanings and implications of race are produced and invested in by social institutions, as well as through cultural representations. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.01%3A_Race/10.1D%3A_Social_Definition_of_Race.txt |
Racism is the belief that different traits of racial groups are inherent and justify discrimination.
Learning Objectives
• Identify four scenarios which separately illustrate individual-level racism, structural racism, cultural racism, and historical racism
Key Points
• Racism may be expressed individually and consciously, through explicit thoughts, feelings, or acts, or socially and unconsciously, through institutions that promote inequality between races.
• Individual-level racism is seen in prejudice, bias, or discrimination displayed between two or more people.
• Structural racism refers to inequalities built into an organization or system.
• Historical economic or social disparity caused by racism can adversely affect present generations.
• Historical economic or social disparity caused by racism can adversely affect present generations.
• Racial profiling involves the singling out of individuals based upon their race for differential treatment, often in the form of increased surveillance or enforcement by the criminal justice system.
• Color-blind racism involves the avoidance of racial language as a means to suggest that racism is no longer an issue when it actually is.
• Genocide refers to the attempt to completely destroy a racial or ethnic group, usual perpetrated by a dominant racial group against a persecuted one.
Key Terms
• Structural Racism: Unequal practices built into organizations or institutional systems that disproportionately benefit or disadvantage particular racial groups.
• racism: prejudice or discrimination based upon race; the belief that one race is superior to all others
• Cultural Racism: A variation of structural racism that occurs when the assumption of the inferiority of one or more races is embraced by the culture of a given society.
Racism is the belief that different inherent traits in racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term “racism” is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature, which is often justified by recourse to racial stereotyping or pseudo-science.
Racism can refer to any or all of the following beliefs and behaviors:
• Race is the primary determinant of human capacities (prejudice or bias).
• A certain race is inherently superior or inferior to others (prejudice or bias).
• Individuals should be treated differently according to their racial classification (prejudice or bias).
Racism is broadly recognized as an affront to basic human dignity and a violation of human rights. Racism is opposed by almost all mainstream voices in the United States. A number of international treaties have sought to end racism. The United Nations uses a definition of racist discrimination laid out in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination adopted in 1965:
“…any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life. ”
Expressions of Racism
Racism may be expressed individually and consciously, through explicit thoughts, feelings, or acts, or socially and unconsciously, through institutions that promote inequalities among races.
Individual-Level Racism
Individual-level racism is prejudice, bias, or discrimination displayed in an interaction between two or more people. An example of individual-level racism would be an employer firing someone because of his/her race, without regard to their skills or qualifications as an employee.
Children develop an awareness of race and racial stereotypes quite young (between the ages of 5 and 11), and these racial stereotypes affect behavior. For example, children who identify with a racial minority that is stereotyped as not doing well in school tend to perform worse academically when they learn about the stereotype associated with their race.
Structural Racism
Structural racism refers to inequalities built into an organization or system. An example of structural racism can be seen in recent research on workplace discrimination. There is widespread discrimination against job applicants whose names were merely perceived as “sounding black. ” These applicants were 50 percent less likely than candidates perceived as having “white-sounding names” to receive callbacks for interviews, no matter what their level of previous experience was. The researchers view these results as strong evidence of unconscious biases rooted in the country’s long history of discrimination. This is an example of structural racism as it shows a widespread established belief system that treats people differently based upon their race.
Additional examples of structural racism include apartheid in South Africa, the system of Jim Crow laws in the U.S., and the inequitable lending practices of banks (i.e., redlining).
Cultural Racism
Cultural racial discrimination, a variation of structural racism, occurs when the assumption of inferiority of one or more races is built into the a society ‘s cultural norms. Racism is an expression of culture, passed on through enculturation and socialization.
Historical Racism
Historical economic or social disparity caused by past racism affects the present generation of the victimized group. For example, racial deficits still exist in formal education, and unconscious racist attitudes still exist against certain members of the general population. This perspective seeks to explain how, for example, African Americans in the U.S. have had their opportunities in life adversely affected due to the enslavement of their ancestors. Disparities in wealth, net worth, and education lend credence to this idea.
One response to racial disparity in the U.S. has been affirmative action. Affirmative action is the practice of favoring or benefiting members of a particular race in areas such as college admissions and workplace advancement, in an attempt to create atmospheres of racial diversity and racial equality. Though lauded by many as a boon to society, giving the less privileged a chance at success and working to overcome historical social disparity, the practice is condemned as racially discriminatory by others.
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An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with one another through a common cultural heritage.
Learning Objectives
• Criticize the concept of ethnicity from the perspective of Max Weber’s and Ronald Cohen’s theories of social constructionism, referencing the approaches of primordialism, perennialism, and constructivism
Key Points
• An ethnicity is a socially constructed category, the traits and parameters of which can change depending on the prevailing social and political context.
• A situational ethnicity is an ethnic identity that is particular to a social setting or context.
• The various approaches to understanding ethnicity include primordialism, essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism and instrumentalism.
• Ethnicity is distinct from race, because ethnicity is based on social traits, while race is based on the belief that a certain group of people share particular biological characteristics.
• Ethnicity is distinct from race, because ethnicity is based on social traits, while race is based on the belief that a certain group of people share particular biological characteristics.
• Ethnic nationalism is a political ideology which is the result of tying the concepts of cultural heritage and nationalism together.
Key Terms
• instrumentalism: A perspective towards ethnicity that sees ethnic classification as a mechanism of social stratification or as the basis for a social hierarchy.
• modernism: A school of thought with regards to ethnicity that ties the emergence of ethnic groups to the emergence of modern nation-states.
Ethnicity is a term that describes shared culture —the practices, values, and beliefs of a group. This might include shared language, religion, and traditions, among other commonalities. An ethnic group is a collection of people whose members identify with each other through a common heritage, consisting of a common culture which may also include a shared language or dialect. The group’s ethos or ideology may also stress common ancestry, religion, or race. The process that results in the emergence of an ethnicity is known as ethnogenesis.
Conceptual History of Ethnicity
Ethnicity is a constructed category, the characteristics and boundaries of which have been renegotiated and redefined over the years to suit different contexts and objectives.
Sociologist Max Weber asserted that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a social construct ) for three reasons. Firstly, they were based on a subjective believe in shared Gemeinschaft (community). Secondly, this belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not create the group; rather, the group created the belief. Thirdly, group formation resulted from the drive to monopolize power and status.
In 1978, Anthropologist Ronald Cohen claimed that the identification of “ethnic groups” in the usage of social scientists often reflected inaccurate labels more than indigenous realities:
… the named ethnic identities we accept, often unthinkingly, as basic givens in the literature are often arbitrarily, or even worse inaccurately, imposed.
In this way, he pointed to the fact that identification of an ethnic group by outsiders, e.g. anthropologists, may not coincide with the self-identification of the members of that group. Cohen also suggested that claims concerning “ethnic” identity (like earlier claims concerning “tribal” identity) are often colonialist practices and effects of the relations between colonized peoples and nation-states.
Therefore, the socio-cultural and behavioral differences between peoples of different ethnicities do not necessarily stem from inherited traits and tendencies derived from common descent; rather, the identification of an ethnic groups is often socially and politically motivated.
“Ethnies” or Ethnic Categories
The following categories – “ethnic categories,” “ethnic networks,” “ethnies” or “ethnic communities,” and “situational ethnicity” – were developed in order to distinguish the instances when ethnic classification is the labeling of others and when it is a case of self-identification.
• An “ethnic category” is a category set up by those who are outside of the category. The members of an ethnic category are categorized by outsiders as being distinguished by attributes of a common name or emblem, a shared cultural element and a connection to a specific territory.
• At the level of “ethnic networks”, the group begins to have a sense of collectiveness; at this level, common myths of origin and shared cultural and biological heritage begin to emerge, at least among the elites of that group.
• At the level of “ethnies” or “ethnic communities”, the members themselves have clear conceptions of being “a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, and one or more common elements of culture, including an association with a homeland, and some degree of solidarity, at least among the elites”. In other words, an ethnie is self-defined as a group.
• A “situational ethnicity” is an ethnic identity that is chosen for the moment based on the social setting or situation.
Approaches to Understanding Ethnicity
Different approaches have been used by different social scientists to attempt to understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society. Examples of such approaches include primordialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism, and instrumentalism.
• Primordialism holds that ethnicity has existed at all times of human history and that modern ethnic groups have historical roots far into the past. According to this framework, the idea of ethnicity is closely linked to the idea of nations and is rooted in the pre-Weber understanding of humanity as being divided into primordially existing groups rooted by kinship and biological heritage.
• Perennialism holds that ethnicity is ever changing, and that while the concept of ethnicity has existed at all times, ethnic groups are generally short lived before the ethnic boundaries realign in new patterns.
• Constructivism sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically flawed, and holds that ethnic groups are only products of human social interaction, maintained only in so far as they are maintained as valid social constructs in societies.
• Modernism
• Instrumentalism
Ethnicity and Race
Ethnicity, while related to race, refers not to physical characteristics but social traits that are shared by a human population. Some of the social traits often used for ethnic classification include nationality, religious faith and a shared language and culture.
Like race, the term ethnicity is difficult to describe and its meaning has changed over time. And like race, individuals may be identified or self-identify to ethnicities in complex, even contradictory, ways. For example, ethnic groups such as Irish, Italian American, Russian, Jewish, and Serbian might all be groups whose members are predominantly included in the racial category “white. ” Conversely, the ethnic group British includes citizens from a multiplicity of racial backgrounds: black, white, Asian, and more, plus a variety of racial combinations. These examples illustrate the complexity and overlap of these identifying terms. Ethnicity, like race, continues to be an identification method that individuals and institutions use today—whether through the census, affirmative action initiatives, non-discrimination laws, or simply in personal day-to-day relations.
A Tour of Chinese Ethnic Minorities (Preview) – YouTube: Provides a glimpse into the many and diverse ethnic groups to be found in China.
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The term “minority” is applied to various groups who hold few or no positions of power in a given society.
Learning Objectives
• Define a minority group
Key Points
• The term minority doesn’t necessarily refer to a numeric minority. Women, for example, make up roughly half the population but are often considered a minority group.
• Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin into account in order to benefit an underrepresented group.
Key Terms
• affirmative action: A policy or program providing advantages for people of a minority group who are seen to have traditionally been discriminated against, with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society through preferential access to education, employment, health care, social welfare, etc.
• minority group: a sociological category that is differentiated, defined, and often discriminated against by those who hold the majority of positions of social power
• minority: Categories of persons who hold few or no positions of social power in a given society.
In the social sciences, “minority” does not just refer to a statistical measure and can instead refer to categories of persons who hold few or no positions of social power in a given society.
Sociologist Louis Wirth defined a minority group as “a group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination. ” This definition includes both objective and subjective criteria: membership of a minority group is objectively ascribed by society, based on an individual’s physical or behavioral characteristics, such as ethnicity and race or gender and sexuality. It is also subjectively applied by its members, who may use their status as the basis of group identity or solidarity.
Minority group status is also categorical in nature: an individual who exhibits the physical or behavioral characteristics of a given minority group will be accorded the status of that group and be subject to the same treatment as other members of that minority group.
Racial or Ethnic Minorities
Every large society contains ethnic minorities: subgroups that share a common heritage, which often consists of a shared language, culture (often including a religion), or ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy. In this case, while minority status can be conditioned by a clear numerical difference, more significantly it refers to issues of political power. In some places, subordinate ethnic groups may constitute a numerical majority, such as blacks in South Africa under apartheid.
In addition to long-established ethnic minority populations in various nation-states, ethnic minorities may consist of more recent migrant, indigenous, or landless nomadic communities residing within, or between, a particular national territory.
Gender and Sexuality Minorities
Recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as a minority group or groups has gained prominence in the Western world since the nineteenth century. The abbreviation “LGBT” is currently used to group these identities together. The term queer is sometimes understood as an umbrella term for all non-normative sexualities and gender expressions but does not always signify a minority; rather, as with many gay rights activists of the 1960s and 1970s, it sometimes represents an attempt to highlight sexual diversity in everyone.
While in most societies the numbers of men and women are roughly equal, the status of women as a oppressed group has led some, such as feminists and other participants in women’s rights movements, to identify them as a minority group.
Religious Minorities
Persons belonging to religious minorities have a faith which is different from that held by the majority population or the population group that is in power. It is now accepted in many multicultural societies around the world that people should have the freedom to choose their own religion, including not having any religion (atheism or agnosticism), and including the right to convert from one religion to another. However in some countries this freedom is still either formally restricted or subject to cultural bias from the majority population.
People with Disabilities
The disability rights movement has contributed to an understanding of people with disabilities as a minority or a coalition of minorities who are disadvantaged by society, not just as people who are disadvantaged by their impairments.
Advocates of disability rights emphasize differences in physical or psychological functioning, rather than inferiority: for example, some people with autism argue for acceptance of neuro-diversity, in the same way in which opponents of racism argue for acceptance of ethnic diversity. The deaf community is often regarded as a linguistic and cultural minority rather than a group with disabilities, and some deaf people do not see themselves as having a disability at all. Rather, they are disadvantaged by technologies and social institutions that are designed to cater to the dominant, hearing-unimpaired group.
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action is a controversial issue, which refers to policies that take factors including race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group. This is usually justified as countering the effects of a history of discrimination. Affirmative action can, for example, take the form of a government program to provide immigrant or minority groups who primarily speak a marginalized language with extra teaching in the majority language, so that they are better able to compete for places at university or for jobs.
Ethnic Minority Disparities in Cancer Treatment: Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson discusses minority health research at the National Institute of Health.
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Learning Objectives
• Apply the concepts of in-group favoritism and prejudice to a real-life situation
When we meet strangers we automatically process three pieces of information about them: their race, gender, and age. Why are these aspects of an unfamiliar person so important? Why don’t we instead notice whether their eyes are friendly, whether they are smiling, their height, the type of clothes they are wearing? Although these secondary characteristics are important in forming a first impression of a stranger, the social categories of race, gender, and age provide a wealth of information about an individual. This information, however, often is based on stereotypes. We may have different expectations of strangers depending on their race, gender, and age.
Prejudice is a negative attitude and feeling toward an individual based solely on one’s membership in a particular social group (Allport, 1954; Brown, 2010). Prejudice is common against people who are members of an unfamiliar cultural group. Thus, certain types of education, contact, interactions, and building relationships with members of different cultural groups can reduce the tendency toward prejudice. In fact, simply imagining interacting with members of different cultural groups might affect prejudice. Indeed, when experimental participants were asked to imagine themselves positively interacting with someone from a different group, this led to an increased positive attitude toward the other group and an increase in positive traits associated with the other group.
Prejudice often begins in the form of a stereotype—that is, a specific belief or assumption about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics. Stereotypes become overgeneralized and applied to all members of a group. For example, as Hodge, Burden, Robinson, and Bennett (2008) point out, black male athletes are often believed to be more athletic, yet less intelligent, than their white male counterparts. These beliefs persist despite a number of high profile examples to the contrary. Sadly, such beliefs often influence how these athletes are treated by others and how they view themselves and their own capabilities. Whether or not you agree with a stereotype, stereotypes are generally well-known within in a given culture.
Key Points
• When we meet strangers we automatically process several pieces of information about them, including the social categories of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and ability.
• First impressions are often based on stereotypes. For example, we may have different expectations of strangers depending on their race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and ability.
• Prejudice is a negative attitude and feeling toward an individual based solely on one’s membership in a particular social group.
• Prejudice often begins in the form of a stereotype—that is, a specific belief or assumption about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics. Stereotypes become overgeneralized and applied to all members of a group.
Key Terms
• stereotype: A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image of a group of people or things.
• prejudice: A positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their perceived group membership (e.g., race, class, or gender).
10.4B: Discrimination Against Individuals
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on his or her membership (or perceived membership) in a certain group.
Learning Objectives
• Give an example of discrimination and reverse discrimination using examples of religious, gender, or racial prejudice
Key Points
• A common type of discrimination is the exclusion or restriction of members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group.
• Racial, religious, and gender discrimination are common types of this phenomenon.
• Controversial attempts have been made to mitigate and rectify the negative effects of discrimination. These attempts in turn, however, have sometimes been called reverse discrimination.
• Reverse discrimination is a term referring to discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, including the city or state, or in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group.
Key Terms
• reverse discrimination: Discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, including the city or state, or in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group.
• discrimination: The prejudicial treatment of an individual based on his or her membership, or perceived membership, in a certain group or category.
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on his/her membership (or perceived membership) in a certain group or category, and involves actual actions taken towards that individual. A common example of discrimination is the exclusion or restriction of members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group, such as access to public facilities like bathrooms and water fountains.
Controversial attempts have been made to redress negative effects of discrimination. One example is the implementation of racial quotas, that is, establishing numerical requirements for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of a particular racial group. These attempts in turn, however, have sometimes been called reverse discrimination (see below).
Racial and Ethnic Discrimination
Racial discrimination results in unequal treatment between individuals on the basis of real and perceived racial differences. It may manifest on every level of social life, from minor disregard or intense hostility in interpersonal interactions to much larger instantiations in public institutions (also called structural or institutional discrimination), such as the segregatory practices prominent in the Jim Crow era of the Unites States (1870s-1960s).
Sex, Gender and Gender Identity Discrimination
Though what constitutes sex discrimination varies between countries, it essentially refers to an adverse action taken against a person based on their perceived sex, gender, and/or gender identity. Historically, sexual differences have been used to justify different social roles for men and women. Unfair discrimination usually follows the gender stereotypes held by a society.
Religious Discrimination
Religious discrimination is prejudicial treatment of a person or group differently based on their spiritual or religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
In a 1979 consultation on the issue, the United States commission on civil rights defined religious discrimination in relation to the civil rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which deals with due process and equal fairness of all citizens under the law. According to the commission, religious discrimination occurs when someone is denied ” the equal protection of the laws, equality of status under the law, equal treatment in the administration of justice, and equality of opportunity and access to employment, education, housing, public services and facilities, and public accommodation because of their exercise of their right to religious freedom. ”
Reverse Discrimination
Reverse discrimination is a term referring to discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, including the city or state, or in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group. Groups may be defined in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, or other factors. This discrimination may seek to redress social inequalities where minority groups have been denied access to the same privileges of the majority group. In such cases it is intended to remove discrimination that minority groups may already face.
Reverse discrimination may also be used to highlight the discrimination inherent in affirmative action programs.
Legislation in some nations, such as the UK, assert that identical treatment may sometimes act to preserve inequality rather than eliminate it, and therefore this so-called reverse discrimination is justified. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.04%3A_Prejudice_and_Discrimination/10.4A%3A_Prejudice.txt |
Institutionalized discrimination refers to discrimination embedded in the procedures, policies or objectives of large organizations.
Learning Objectives
• Examine the legal cases that had an impact on institutional discrimination
Key Points
• Usually institutional bias targets specific, easily stereotyped and generalizable attributes of individuals, such as race and gender.
• Institutionalized discrimination often exists within governments, though it can also occur in any other type of social institution including religion, education and marriage.
• The achievement gap in education is an example of institutionalized discrimination.
• Many countries around the world practice some form of institutionalized discrimination. For example, in some countries women cannot vote, drive or work certain jobs.
Key Terms
• achievement gap: The observed and persistent disparity between the performance of groups of students defined by gender, race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, based on a number of educational measures.
• institutionalized discrimination: The unfair, indirect methods of treatment of individuals that are embedded in the operating procedures, policies, laws or objectives of large organizations.
Institutionalized discrimination refers to the unfair, indirect treatment of certain members within a group. These practices are embedded in the operating procedures, policies, laws, or objectives of large organizations, such as governments and corporations, financial institutions, public institutions and other large entities.
Usually the bias targets specific, easily stereotyped and generalizable attributes, such as race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation and age. Though direct discrimination is illegal by United States law, many academics, activists, and advocacy organizations assert that indirect discrimination is still pervasive in many social institutions and daily social practices.
Examples
Examples of institutionalized discrimination include laws and decisions that reflect racism, such as the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson U.S. Supreme Court case, which ruled in favor of “separate but equal” public facilities between African Americans and non African Americans. This ruling was later rescinded in 1954 by the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.
Institutionalized discrimination often exists within governments, though it can also occur in any other type of social institution, including religion, education and marriage. For example, residential segregation is a product of discrimination that exists in the private real estate market. Housing in the United States can be valued differently based on the racial makeup of the neighborhood. There can be two identical houses, in terms of factors like amenities and size, but the value of each house can depend on the racial makeup of the people within the community. Homeowners would therefore have an incentive to prevent minorities from moving into white neighborhoods. Institutionalized discrimination within the housing market also includes practices like redlining and mortgage discrimination.
The achievement gap in education is another example of institutionalized discrimination. The achievement gap refers to the observed disparity in educational measures between the performance of groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. This disparity include standardized test scores, grade point average, dropout rates and college enrollment and/or completion rates.
International Examples
Many countries around the world exhibit some form of institutionalized discrimination, such as Saudi Arabia where women and other oppressed groups cannot participate in some religious activities, and can neither vote nor work in government. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.04%3A_Prejudice_and_Discrimination/10.4C%3A_Institutional_Prejudice_or_Discrimination.txt |
Assimilation describes the process of social, cultural, and political integration of a minority into a dominant culture and society.
Learning Objectives
• Give a real life example for each of the four benchmarks of immigrant assimilation
Key Points
• Immigrant assimilation is one of the most common forms of assimilation, and is a very complex process.
• Social scientists rely on four primary benchmarks to assess immigrant assimilation: socioeconomic status, geographic distribution, second language attainment, and intermarriage.
• Socioeconomic status is defined by educational attainment, occupation, and income. Spatial concentration is defined by geography or residential patterns.
• Language attainment refers to the ability to speak English and the loss of the individual’s mother tongue. Intermarriage involves marriage across racial, ethnic, or, occasionally, generational lines.
• Segmented assimilation states that there are three main paths of assimilation for second generation immigrants: some assimilate smoothly, others experience downward assimilation, and others experience rapid economic success while preserving the values of their immigrant community.
• Intermarriage involves marriage across racial, ethnic, or, occasionally, generational lines.
Key Terms
• intermarriage: a marriage between people belonging to different groups, ethnic, religious or otherwise.
• spatial concentration: A measure of how densely particular ethnic groups are situated in a geographic location.
• socioeconomic status: One’s social position as determined by income, wealth, occupational prestige, and educational attainment.
Assimilation describes the process by which a minority integrates socially, culturally, and/or politically into a larger, dominant culture and society. The term assimilation is often used in reference to immigrants and ethnic groups settling in a new land. Immigrants acquire new customs and attitudes through contact and communication with a new society, while they also introduce some of their own cultural traits to that society.
Assimilation usually involves a gradual change of varying degree. Full assimilation occurs when new members of a society become indistinguishable from native members.
Any group (such as a state, immigrant population, or ethnicity) may choose to adopt a different culture for a variety of reasons such as political relevance or perceived advantage. However, a group may also be forced or feel compelled to do so as a result of imperialistic conquest, immigration, or drastic changes in population.
Assimilation of Immigrants
Immigrant assimilation is one of the most common forms of assimilation. It is a complex process through which an immigrant integrates themselves into a new country. Geography professor and human migration specialist William A. V. Clark says that immigrant assimilation is “a way of understanding the social dynamics of American society” and defines it as “the process that occurs spontaneously and often unintended in the course of interaction between majority and minority groups. ”
Social scientists rely on four benchmarks, initially formulated when studying European immigrants in the U.S., to assess immigrant assimilation:
1. Socioeconomic status is defined by educational attainment, occupation, and income. By measuring socioeconomic status, researchers seek to determine whether immigrants eventually catch up to native-born people in matters of capital.
2. Spatial concentration is defined by geography or residential patterns. The spatial residential model states that increasing socioeconomic attainment, longer residence in the U.S, and higher generational status lead to decreasing residential concentration for a particular ethnic group.
3. Language attainment is defined as the ability to speak English and the loss of the individual’s mother tongue. The three-generation model of language assimilation states that the first generation makes some progress in language assimilation but retains primary fluency in their native tongue, while the second generation is bilingual and the third generation speaks only English.
4. Intermarriage refers to marriage across racial, ethnic, or, occasionally, generational lines. High rates of intermarriage are considered to be an indication of social integration, as they suggest intimate and profound relations between people of different groups. Intermarriage reduces the ability of families to pass on to their children a consistent ethnic culture and thus is an agent of assimilation.
Naturalization and Immigrant Assimilation
Other than marriage, citizenship is one of the most significant factors in assimilation. Thus, immigration debates focus not only on the number of immigrants that should be admitted into a country and the processes of incorporation, but also on how citizenship should be extended and to whom. Proponents of immigration often argue that new residents will help to build and enrich American democracy, while opponents counter that the identity and legitimacy of the nation may be challenged and perhaps even threatened by immigrants. Questions of citizenship in relation to illegal immigration is a particularly controversial issue and a common source of political tension.
New Immigrant Gateways and Immigrant Assimilation
The majority of immigrants have tended to settle in traditional gateway states such as Florida, New York, California, Illinois, Texas, and Massachusetts, where immigrants find large existing populations of foreign-born people. Recently, however, immigrants have increasingly been settling in areas outside these gateway states. Sociologists Mary Waters and Tomas R. Jimenez have suggested that these geographical shifts may change the way researchers assess immigrant assimilation, as immigrants settling in new areas may encounter different experiences than immigrants settling in more traditional gateways. Specifically, Waters and Jimenez identify three distinguishing characteristics in more recent, less traditional, immigration patterns: less established social hierarchies, smaller immigrant population size, and different institutional arrangements.
Segmented Assimilation
The theory of segmented assimilation for second generation immigrants is highly researched in the sociological arena. Segmented assimilation, researched by Min Zhou and Alejandro Portes, focuses on the notion that people take different paths in how they adapt to life in the United States. This theory states that there are three main different paths of assimilation for second generation immigrants. Some immigrants assimilate smoothly into the white middle class of America, others experience downward assimilation, and others experience rapid economic success while preserving the values of their immigrant community.
This theory also includes the concept of modes of incorporation, which are the external factors within the host community that affect assimilation. These factors are created by the underlying policies of the government, the strength of prejudice in the society, and the makeup of coethnic communities within the society. These modes of incorporation affect how a child will assimilate into U.S. society, and determine how vulnerable the child will be towards downward assimilation. Factors that enhance such vulnerability include racial discrimination, location, and changes in the economy that have made it harder for intergenerational mobility.
In addition, differing modes of incorporation make available certain resources that second generation immigrants can use to overcome challenges to the process of assimilation. If the child belongs to a group that has been exempt from the prejudice experienced by most immigrants, such as European immigrants, they will experience a smoother process of assimilation. A second generation immigrant can also make use of established networks in the coethnic community. These networks provide these children with additional resources beyond those offered by the government, such as gateways into well paying jobs in businesses established by the ethnic community. Children of middle class immigrants have a greater likelihood of moving up the social ladder and joining American mainstream society than children of lower class immigrants, as they have access to both the resources provided by their parents and to the educational opportunities afforded to the middle class in the U.S. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.04%3A_Prejudice_and_Discrimination/10.4D%3A_Assimilation.txt |
Multiculturalism is an ideology that promotes the institutionalization of communities containing multiple cultures.
Learning Objectives
• Reconstruct the crux of the debate about multiculturalism, including its different forms and opposition to it
Key Points
• Multiculturalism is seen by its supporters as a fairer system that allows people to truly express who they are within a society, that is more tolerant, and that adapts better to social issues.
• Critics of multiculturalism often debate whether the multicultural ideal of benignly co-existing cultures that interrelate and influence one another, and yet remain distinct, is sustainable, paradoxical, or even desirable.
• Multiculturalism is often contrasted with the concepts of assimilationism and has been described as a “salad bowl” or “cultural mosaic” rather than an assimilationist “melting pot”.
Key Terms
• multiculturalism: A characteristic of a society that has many different ethnic or national cultures mingling freely. It can also refer to political or social policies which support or encourage such a coexistence. Important in this is the idea that cultural practices, no matter how unusual, should be tolerated as a measure of respect.
Multiculturalism is an ideology that promotes the institutionalization of communities containing multiple cultures. It is generally applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level (e.g., schools, businesses, neighborhoods, cities, or nations).
In a political context, the term is used for a wide variety of meanings. These can range from the advocacy of equal respect for the various cultures in a society, to a policy of promoting the maintenance of cultural diversity, to policies in which people of various ethnic and religious groups are addressed by the authorities according to the definition of the group to which they belong. A common aspect of many such policies is that they avoid presenting any specific ethnic, religious, or cultural community values as central.
Multiculturalism is often contrasted with the concepts of assimilationism and has been described as a “salad bowl” or “cultural mosaic,” rather than an assimilationist “melting pot.”
Definition
There is no single, agreed-upon definition for multiculturalism and different countries approach the issue in a variety of manners. However two main different and seemingly inconsistent strategies have developed through varied government policies and strategies.
• The first focuses on interaction and communication between different cultures. By encouraging different cultures to interact, hopefully, cultural differences can be recognized and accepted rather than suppressed or ignored, thus promoting a sense of multiculturalism.
• The second centers on diversity and cultural uniqueness. Cultural isolation can protect the uniqueness of the local culture of a nation or area and also contribute to global cultural diversity.
Political scholar Andrew Heywood distinguishes between two forms of multiculturalism: descriptive and normative:
• As a descriptive term, it refers to general cultural diversity.
• As a normative term, multiculturalism “implies a positive endorsement, even celebration, of communal diversity, typically based on either the right of different groups to respect and recognition, or to the alleged benefits to the larger society of moral and cultural diversity”.
Multiculturalism as Government Policy
Multiculturalism has been an official policy in several Western nations since the 1970s, for reasons that vary from country to country, including the fact that many of the great cities of the Western world are increasingly made of a mosaic of cultures. The Canadian government has often been described as the instigator of multicultural ideology because of its public emphasis on the social importance of immigration. The Canadian Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism is often refered to as the origins of modern political awareness of multiculturalism.
Support for Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is seen by its supporters as a fairer system that allows people to truly express who they are within a society, that is more tolerant, and adapts better to social issues. They argue that culture is not one definable thing based on one race or religion, but rather the result of multiple factors that change as the world changes.
Multiculturalism in Western countries was seen as a useful set of strategies to combat racism, protect minority communities of all types, and to undo policies that had prevented minorities from having full access to the opportunities for freedom and equality promised by the liberalism that have been the hallmark of Western societies since the Age of Enlightenment.
Opposition to Multiculturalism
Critics of multiculturalism often debate whether or not the multicultural ideal of benignly co-existing cultures that interrelate and influence one another, and yet remain distinct, is sustainable, paradoxical, or even desirable. It is argued that nation states, which would previously have been synonymous with a distinctive cultural identity of their own, lose out to enforced multiculturalism and that this ultimately erodes the host nations’ distinct culture.
Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade-long study of how multiculturalism affects social trust. He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income, and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities “don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,” writes Putnam. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.04%3A_Prejudice_and_Discrimination/10.4E%3A_Pluralism.txt |
Segregation is the division of human beings into separate groups based on any number of criteria, such as race, ethnicity, or nationality.
Learning Objectives
• Identify at least three key moments in the history of racial segregation in the U.S.
Key Points
• Racial segregation is one of the most common forms of segregation. Although it is illegal in many societies, it may still exist through social norms even when there is no strong individual preference for it.
• After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in America, racial discrimination became regulated by the so called Jim Crow laws, which mandated strict segregation of the races.
• By 1968 all forms of segregation had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and by 1970 support for formal legal segregation had dissolved.
Key Terms
• segregation: People separating geographically, residentially, racially, religiously or by sex based on legal codes, happenstance, voluntary choice or cultural attitudes.
• Racial Segregation: The separation of humans into racial groups throughout aspects of daily life, sometimes enforced by law.
Segregation is the social division of human beings based on any number of factors, including race, ethnicity, or nationality. It may apply to various situations of daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, using a public restroom, attending school, or going to the movies
Racial segregation is one of the most common forms of segregation and is generally outlawed, but can still exist through social norms even when there is no strong individual preference for it.
Segregation often involves spatial separation of races and/or mandatory use of institutions, such as schools and hospitals, by people of different races—an exception being allowing for close contact in hierarchical situations, i.e., a person of one race working as a servant for a person of another race.
Racial segregation has appeared in all parts of the world where there are multiracial communities. Even where racial mixing has occurred on a large scale, as in Hawaii and Brazil, various forms of social discrimination have persisted despite the absence of official segregationist laws.
History of Racial Segregation
After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in America, racial discrimination became regulated by the so-called Jim Crow laws—strict mandates on segregation of the races. Though such laws were instituted shortly after the war ended, in many cases they were not formalized until the end of Republican-enforced Reconstruction in the 1870s and 80s. This legalized form of segregation into the mid 1960s.
As an official practice, institutionalized racial segregation ended in large part due to the work of civil rights activists (Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr., Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., among others) primarily during the period from the end of World War II through the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Their efforts focused on acts of non-violent civil disobedience aimed at disrupting the enforcement of racial segregation rules and laws. Examples are holding sit-ins at all-white diners, or the widely publicized refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a bus to a white person.
By 1968 all forms of segregation had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and by 1970 support for formal legal segregation dissolved. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, administered and enforced by the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, prohibited discrimination in the sale and rental of housing on the basis of race, color, nationality, religion, sex, familial status and disability. The civil rights movement gained the public’s support, and formal racial discrimination and segregation became illegal in schools, businesses, the military, and other civil and government services.
In the years since, African Americans have played a significant role throughout society, as leaders, public officials and heads of state. On the national level, they have worked in the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and held top Presidential cabinet positions. In 2008, the United States elected its first African American President.
Contemporary Forms of Segregation
Columbia University economist Rajiv Sethi has observed that black-white segregation is declining fairly consistently in most metropolitan areas of the U.S. Despite these overall patterns, changes in individual areas remain small. Racial segregation or separation can lead to social, economic and political tensions.
In many areas, the United States remains a residentially segregated society. Blacks, whites, Hispanics and other racial groups inhabit different neighborhoods of vastly different quality. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.04%3A_Prejudice_and_Discrimination/10.4F%3A_Segregation.txt |
Population transfer is the movement of a large group of people from one region to another by state policy or international authority.
Learning Objectives
• Analyze why population transfers went from being an acceptable solution to problems of ethnic conflict to being unacceptable
Key Points
• Often the affected population is transferred by force to a distant, unfamiliar region, resulting in substantial harm to the population in question.
• Population exchange is the transfer of two populations in opposite directions at about the same time.
• Population transfer was considered an acceptable solution to the problems of ethnic conflict, up until around World War II. This attitude underwent substantial revision with the Charter of the Nuremberg Trials of Germany.
• Today, forced population transfers and exchanges are considered a violation of international law.
Key Terms
• population transfer: The movement of a large group of people from one region to another by state policy or international authority, most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion.
• Population Exchange: The transfer of two populations in opposite directions at about the same time.
Population transfer is the movement of a large group of people from one region to another by state policy or international authority, most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Often the affected population is transferred by force to a distant region, perhaps not suited to their way of life, causing them substantial personal and bodily harm and resulting in significant damage and loss of property.
Population exchange is the transfer of two populations in opposite directions at about the same time. These exchanges have taken place several times in the 20th century, such as during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan.
Issues Arising from Population Transfer
According to political scientist Norman Finkelstein, population transfer was considered as an acceptable solution to the problems of ethnic conflict up until around World War II and even a little afterward in certain cases. It was considered a drastic but “often necessary” means to end an ethnic conflict or ethnic civil war. The feasibility of population transfers was hugely increased by the creation of railroad networks in the mid-19th century.
Population transfer differs from individually motivated migration in more than just a technical sense, though at times of war the act of fleeing from danger or famine often blurs the differences.
Changing Status in International Law
The view of international law on population transfer underwent considerable evolution during the 20thcentury. Prior to World War II, a number of major population transfers were the result of bilateral treaties with the support of international bodies such as the League of Nations.
The tide started to turn when the Charter of the Nuremberg Trials of German Nazi leaders declared that forced deportation of civilian populations was both a war crime and a crime against humanity.This opinion was progressively adopted and extended through the remainder of the century. Underlying the change was the trend to assign rights to individuals, limiting the rights of states to make agreements which adversely affect them.
There is now little debate about the general legal status of involuntary population transfers, as forced population transfers are now considered violations of international law. No legal distinction is made between one-way and two-transfers, since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others.
Adopted in 1949 and now part of customary international law, Article 49 of Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits mass movement of people out of or into of occupied territory under what it calls “belligerent military occupation”:
Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive…. The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.04%3A_Prejudice_and_Discrimination/10.4G%3A_Population_Transfer.txt |
Genocide is “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group”.
Learning Objectives
• Match at least 4 of the 8 stages of genocide (according to Gregory Stanton) with a real life example
Key Points
• While some scholars claim that genocide develops identifiable stages and therefore action can be taken to stop them before they happen, critics of this approach assert that this is unrealistic.
• In 1996, Gregory Stanton presented a briefing paper called “The 8 Stages of Genocide” at the United States Department of State, in which he suggested that genocide develops in eight stages that are “predictable but not inexorable”.
• Other authors have focused on the structural conditions leading up to genocide and the psychological and social processes that create an evolution toward genocide.
Key Terms
• symbolization: The act of symbolizing; the use of symbols to represent things, or the investing of things with a symbolic meaning
• genocide: The systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status, or other particularity.
• extermination: The act of exterminating; total destruction; eradication; excision; as, the extermination of inhabitants or tribes, of error or vice, or of weeds from a field.
Genocide is defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) as “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group,” though what constitutes enough of a “part” to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars. While a precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations CPPCG, which specifies that genocide entails:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The preamble to the CPPCG states that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history, but it was not until Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term during World War II and the prosecution of perpetrators of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials that the United Nations agreed to the CPPCG, which defined the crime of genocide under international law.
The Stages of Genocide
Genocide scholars such as Gregory Stanton have postulated various conditions and acts that often occur before, during, and after genocide.
In 1996, Stanton presented a briefing paper called “The 8 Stages of Genocide” at the United States Department of State. In it, he suggested that genocide develops in eight stages that are “predictable but not inexorable. ” The stages are:
• Classification:People are divided into “us and them. ” “The main preventive measure at this early stage is to develop universalistic institutions that transcend… divisions. “
• Symbolization:”When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups…””To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally forbidden as can hate speech”.
• Dehumanization:”One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects, or diseases. “”Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable. Leaders who incite genocide should be banned from international travel and have their foreign finances frozen. “
• Organization:”Genocide is always organized… Special army units or militias are often trained and armed…””The U.N. should impose arms embargoes on governments and citizens of countries involved in genocidal massacres, and create commissions to investigate violations”
• Polarization:”Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda…””Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights groups…Coups d’tat by extremists should be opposed by international sanctions. “
• Preparation:”Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity…””At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared….”
• Extermination:”It is ‘extermination’ to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human”. “At this stage, only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention can stop genocide. Real safe areas or refugee escape corridors should be established with heavily armed international protection. “
• Denial:”The perpetrators… deny that they committed any crimes…””The response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts”
While scholars, such as Stanton, claim that these stages can be identified, and actions can be taken to stop genocides before they happen, critics of this approach, such as Australian historian, Dirk Moses, assert that this is unrealistic.
Other authors have focused on the structural conditions leading up to genocide and the psychological and social processes that create an evolution toward genocide. Helen Fein showed that pre-existing anti-Semitism and systems that maintained anti-Semitic policies was related to the number of Jews killed in different European countries during the Holocaust. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.04%3A_Prejudice_and_Discrimination/10.4H%3A_Genocide.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a functionalist approach to race
Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements; namely norms, customs, traditions, and institutions. In the 1960s, functionalism was criticized for being unable to account for social change, or for structural contradictions and conflict (and thus was often called “consensus theory”), and for ignoring systematic inequalities including race, gender, and class, which cause tension and conflict. As noted sociologist Michael Omi observes, “The structural-functionalist framework generally stressed the unifying role of culture, and particularly American values, in regulating and resolving conflicts. This approach was notably in evidence in respect to the sociology of race” (Coulhan 2007, Sociology in America, p.559). From this perspective, societies are seen as coherent, bounded, and fundamentally relational constructs that function like organisms, with their various parts (such as race) working together in an unconscious, quasi-automatic fashion toward achieving an overall social equilibrium.
Given this emphasis on equilibrium and harmony, the functionalist perspective easily allows for specific macro-analyses of more contentious power imbalances, such as race-related issues. It also allows for the micro-analyses that much of modern sociology is oriented around, such as identity formation and the socially constructed nature of race. It is less well-adapted to understanding individual discrimination because it ignores the inequalities that cause tension and conflict.
During the turbulent 1960s, functionalism was often called “consensus theory,” criticized for being unable to account for social change or structural contradictions and conflict, including inequalities related to race, gender, class, and other social factors that are a source of oppression and conflict.
Key Points
• Classical functionalist theory did not develop specific analyses of race and ethnicity; it viewed them as constituent elements of society that contributed to its relatively smooth functioning.
• Functionalism emphasizes social unity and equilibrium and has been criticized for being unable to account for social conflict and systematic inequalities such as race, gender, and class.
• Since structural functionalism generally stresses the unifying role of culture, it is ill-equipped to understand divisive forces like discrimination.
Key Terms
• structural functionalism: A sociological approach that looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole.
10.5B: The Conflict Perspective
Learning Objectives
• Explain race and ethnicity from the perspective of different conflict theorists
The classical conflict perspective pioneered by Karl Marx saw all forms of inequality subsumed under class conflict. For Marx, issues related to race and ethnicity are secondary to class struggle. Other early conflict theorists saw racial and ethnic conflict as more central. Sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz, in Grundriss der Soziologie (Outlines of Sociology, 1884), described how civilization has been shaped by conflict between cultures and ethnic groups, theorizing that large complex human societies evolved from war and conquest. Since the social, political, and cultural upheavals of the 1960s, there has been a wellspring of conflict theory-inspired analyses of race and ethnicity, many of which eventually developed into an overlapping focus on the intersectional nature of various forms of conflict and oppression.
Intersectionality
Intersectionality is a feminist sociological theory first highlighted by leading critical theorist thinker Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989). The theory proposes that different biological, social, and cultural factors, such as as gender, race, and class, do not operate in isolation of one antoher. Rather, they are interrlated, forming a system of oppression that consists of different forms of discrimination. This theory will be further discussed under the feminist perspective of gender stratification in the chapter, “Understanding Gender Stratification and Inequality”.
W. E. B. Du Bois theorized that the intersectional paradigms of race, class, and nation might explain certain aspects of Black political economy. Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins writes “Du Bois saw race, class, and nation not primarily as personal identity categories but as social hierarchies that shaped African American access to status, poverty, and power” (2000 Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, 42).
Key Points
• The feminist theory of intersectionality suggests that different biological, social, and cultural categories, such as race, ethnicity, and gender, interact and intersect to form a system of oppression.
• Since the social, political, and cultural upheavals of the 1960s, there has been a wellspring of conflict theory-inspired analyses of race and ethnicity.
• W. E. B. Du Bois theorized that the intersectional paradigms of race, class, and nation might explain certain aspects of Black political economy.
Key Terms
• Intersectionality: The idea that various biological, social, and cultural categories– including gender, race, class, and ethnicity– interact and contribute towards systematic social inequality.
10.5C: The Interactionist Perspective
Learning Objectives
• Describe how the interactionalist perspective views race and ethnicity
Following founding symbolic interactionist George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer claimed that people interact with each other by attaching meaning to each other’s actions instead of merely reacting to them. Human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols and signification, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one another’s actions. One of the most influential symbolic interactionist theorists on race and ethnic relations was Robert Park. Evolving out of the mid-20thcentury “Chicago School” of urban sociology, Park created the term human ecology, which borrowed the concepts of symbiosis, invasion, succession, and dominance from the science of natural ecology.
Using the city of Chicago as an example, he proposed that cities were environments like those found in nature. Park and fellow sociologist Ernest Burgess suggested that cities were governed by many of the same forces of Darwinian evolution evident in ecosystems. They felt the most significant force was competition. Competition was created by groups fighting for urban resources, like land, which led to a division of urban space into ecological niches. Within these niches people shared similar social characteristics because they were subject to the same ecological pressure.
This theory served as a foundation for his influential theory of racial assimilation known as the “race relation cycle”. The cycle has four stages: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. The first step is contact, followed by competition. Then, after some time, a hierarchical arrangement can prevail—one of accommodation—in which one race is dominant and others dominated. In the end assimilation occurs. Park declared that it is “a cycle of events which tends everywhere to repeat itself,” also seen in other social processes.
Key Points
• Robert Park, one of the most influential symbolic interactionist theorists on race and ethnic relations, formed his view on race and ethnicity —” human ecology,” he called it—by drawing on natural ecology.
• Park’s theory of the race relation cycle includes four stages: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation.
• Park declared that race relations entail “a cycle of events which tends everywhere to repeat itself,” also be seen in other social processes.
Key Terms
• Race Relation Cycle: A model of urban race relations consisting of a cycle with four stages: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation.
• Human Ecology: Urban sociologist Robert Park’s model of urban life, which borrowed concepts from symbiosis, invasion, succession, and dominance from the science of natural ecology.
• Robert Park: An urban sociologist from the Chicago School of Sociology who was one of the most influential symbolic interactionist theorists on race and ethnic relations. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.05%3A__Sociological_Perspectives_on_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.5A%3A_The_Functionalist_Perspective.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Describe how the psychological perspective views race and ethnicity
One of the most important social psychological findings concerning race relations is that members of stereotyped groups internalize those stereotypes and thus suffer a wide range of harmful consequences.
Stereotype Threat is the experience of anxiety or concern in a situation where a person has the potential to confirm a negative stereotype about their social group. Since its introduction into the academic literature in 1995, Stereotype Threat has become one of the most widely studied topics in the field of social psychology. First described by social psychologist, Claude Steele and his colleagues, Stereotype Threat has been shown to reduce the performance of individuals who belong to negatively stereotyped groups. If negative stereotypes are present regarding a specific group, they are likely to become anxious about their performance, which in turn may hinder their ability to perform at their maximum level.
Stereotype Threat is a potential contributing factor to long-standing racial and gender gaps in academic performance. However, it may occur whenever an individual’s performance might confirm a negative stereotype. This is because Stereotype Threat is thought to arise from the particular situation rather than from an individual’s personality traits or characteristics. Since most people have at least one social identity which is negatively stereotyped, most people are vulnerable to Stereotype Threat if they encounter a situation in which the stereotype is relevant.
Situational factors that increase Stereotype Threat can include the difficulty of the task, the belief that the task measures their abilities, and the relevance of the negative stereotype to the task. Individuals show higher degrees of Stereotype Threat on tasks they wish to perform well on and when they identify strongly with the stereotyped group. These effects are also increased when they expect discrimination due to their identification with negatively stereotyped group. Repeated experiences of Stereotype Threat can lead to a vicious circle of diminished confidence, poor performance, and loss of interest in the relevant area of achievement.
The opposite of Stereotype Threat is known as Stereotype Enhancement, which entails an individual’s potential to confirm a positive stereotype about their social group, and a subsequent increase in performance ability in the related task as compared to their ability prior to their exposure to the stereotype.
Advocates of Stereotype Threat explanation have been criticized for exaggerating it and for misrepresenting evidence as more conclusive than it is.
Key Points
• Stereotype Threat is the experience of anxiety or concern in a situation where a person has the potential to confirm a negative stereotype about their social group.
• If negative stereotypes are present regarding a specific group, they are likely to become anxious about their performance which may hinder their ability to perform at their maximum level.
• Stereotype Threat is a potential contributing factor to long-standing racial and gender gaps in academic performance.
• Advocates of Stereotype Threat explanation have been criticized for exaggerating the importance of stereotype threat and for misrepresenting evidence as more conclusive than it is.
Key Terms
• internalize: To make something internal; to incorporate it in oneself.
• stereotype threat: The anxiety or stress a person experiences when they find themselves in a situation in which they could potentially confirm a negative stereotype about their social group.
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The U.S. has a diverse society, and its history is marked by attempts to concentrate power, wealth, and privilege into the hands of whites.
Learning Objectives
• Describe the history and current situation of at least three minorities in the U.S.
Key Points
• The emphasis on racial distinctions often results in the failure to acknowledge the ethnic and national diversity that various racial groups encompass.
• The negative effects of unequal race relations can be seen to this day, albeit to different degrees, amongst all non-European American groups.
• A model minority is a stereotype of a minority group that is considered to have achieved educational, professional, and socioeconomic success without threatening the status quo.
Key Terms
• Multi-Racial: When a person’s heritage comes from a variety of different races.
• Model Minority: A minority group that is seen as reaching significant educational, professional, and socioeconomic levels without challenging the existing establishment.
The United States is a very diverse, multi-racial and multi-ethnic country; people from around the world have been immigrating to the United States for several hundred years. While the first wave of immigrants came from Western Europe, the bulk of people entering North America were from Northern Europe, then Eastern Europe, followed by Latin America and Asia. There was also the forced immigration of African slaves. Native Americans, who did not immigrate but rather inhabited the land prior to immigration, experienced displacement as a result. Most of these groups also suffered a period of disenfranchisement and prejudice as they went through the process of assimilation.
Since its early history, Native Americans, African Americans, and European Americans were considered as different races in the United States. The differences attributed to each group, however, especially the differences used to designate European Americans as the superior race, had little to do with biology. Instead, these racial designations were a means to concentrate power, wealth, land, and privilege in the hands of the European Americans. Moreover, the emphasis on racial distinctions often led to the lack of acknowledgement or over-simplification of the great ethnic diversity of the country’s population. For example, the racial category of “white” or European American fails to reflect that members of this group hail from very different countries. Similarly, the racial category of “black” does not distinguish people from the Caribbean from those who were brought to North America from various parts of Africa.
Today, the U.S. continues to see a significant influx of immigrants from all over the world. Race relations in the U.S. remain problematic, marked by discrimination, persecution, violence, and an ongoing struggle for power and equality.
Native Americans
The brutal confrontation between the European colonists and the Native Americans, which resulted in the decimation of the latter’s population, is well known as an historical tragedy. Even after the establishment of the United States government, discrimination against Native Americans was codified and formalized in a series of laws intended to subjugate them and keep them from gaining any power. The eradication of Native American culture continued until the 1960s, when Native Americans were able to participate in, and benefit from, the civil rights movement. Native Americans still suffer the effects of centuries of degradation. Long-term poverty, inadequate education, cultural dislocation, and high rates of unemployment contribute to Native American populations falling to the bottom of the economic spectrum.
African Americans
African Americans arrived in North America under duress as slaves, and there is no starker illustration of the dominant- subordinate group relationship than that of slavery. Slaves were stripped of all their rights and privileges, and were at the absolute mercy of their owners. For African Americans, the civil rights movement was an indication that a subordinate group would no longer willingly submit to domination. The major blow to America’s formally institutionalized racism was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This Act, which is still followed today, banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Some sociologists, however, would argue that institutionalized racism persists, especially since African Americans still fair poorly in terms of employment, insurance coverage, and incarceration, as well as in the areas of economics, health, and education.
Asian Americans
Asian Americans come from a diversity of cultures, including Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. They, too, have been subjected to racial prejudice. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for example, which was motivated by white workers blaming Chinese migrants for taking their jobs, resulted in the abrupt end of Chinese immigration and the segregation of Chinese already in America; this segregation resulted in the Chinatowns found in large cities. Nevertheless, despite a difficult history, Asian Americans have earned the positive stereotype of the model minority. The model minority stereotype is applied to a minority group that is seen as reaching significant educational, professional, and socioeconomic levels without challenging the existing establishment.
Hispanic Americans
Hispanic Americans come from a wide range of backgrounds and nationalities. Mexican Americans form the largest Hispanic subgroup, and also the oldest. Mexican Americans, especially those who are here illegally, are at the center of a national debate about immigration. Mexican immigrants experience relatively low rates of economic and civil assimilation, which is most likely compounded by the fact that many of them are illegally in the country. By contrast, Cuban Americans are often seen as a model minority group within the larger Hispanic group. As with Asian Americans, however, being a model minority can mask the issue of powerlessness that these minority groups face in U.S. society. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.06%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity_in_the_U.S./10.6A%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity_in_the_U.S..txt |
The United States is a diverse country, racially and ethnically.
Learning Objectives
• Explain what definitions of race are deployed by the U.S. census
Key Points
• The United States Census Bureau also classifies Americans as ” Hispanic or Latino” and “Not Hispanic or Latino. ” Hispanic and Latino Americans are a racially diverse ethnicity that composes the largest minority group in the nation.
• The one drop rule, a historical colloquial term, stated that any one considered to have even a drop of black blood was to be classified as being black. This was an effort to restore white supremacy during the post Civil War Reconstruction era.
• The Blood Quantum, or Indian Blood, Laws refers to legislation in the United States to establish a person’s membership in Native American tribes or nations.
Key Terms
• One Drop Rule: A historical colloquial term in the United States for the social classification as black of individuals with any African ancestry; meaning any person with “one drop of black blood” was considered black.
• Other Pacific Islander: A United States Census category referring to individuals from the Pacific Islands but not Hawaii.
• ethnicity: The identity of a group of people having common racial, national, religious, or cultural origins.
The United States is a diverse country, racially and ethnically. Six races are officially recognized: white, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, black or African American, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, and people of two or more races. A race called, “Some other race,” is also used in the census and other surveys but is not official.
The United States Census Bureau also classifies Americans as “Hispanic or Latino” and “Not Hispanic or Latino,” which identifies Hispanic and Latino Americans as a racially diverse ethnicity that composes the largest minority group in the nation.
History
The immigrants to the New World of the Americas came largely from ethnically diverse regions of the European Old World. In the Americas, the immigrant populations began to mix among themselves and with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent, as well as the enslaved Africans.
From the beginning of U.S. history, Native Americans, African Americans, and European Americans were classified as belonging to different races. For nearly three centuries, the criteria for membership in these groups were similar, comprising a person’s appearance, their fraction of known non-European ancestry and their social circle. This changed in the late nineteenth century.
Throughout the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, in an effort to restore white supremacy in the South after the emancipation of slaves, the ruling white majority began to classify anyone considered to have “one drop” of “black blood,” or any known African ancestry, to be “black.” In most southern states, this definition was not put into law until the twentieth century. Many local governments established racial segregation of facilities during what came to be known as the Jim Crow era, which began in the late 1800s.
In the twentieth century, efforts to sort the increasingly mixed population of the United States into discrete categories generated many difficulties for the U.S. government (Spickard, 1992). By the standards used in past censuses, many millions of mixed-race children born in the United States have been classified as of a different race than one of their biological parents. Efforts to track mixing between groups led to a proliferation of categories (such as “mulatto” and “octoroon”) and so-called “blood quantum” distinctions, which refers to the degree of ancestry for an individual of a specific racial or ethnic group (e.g., saying someone is “1/4 Omaha tribe”).
These various distinctions became increasingly untethered from self-reported ancestry. Further complicating this fact is that a person’s racial identity can change over time, and self-ascribed race can differ from assigned race (Kressin et al., 2003).
Current Official Definitions of Race and Ethnicity
Aside from their varied social, culture, and political connotations, the idea of racial groups have been used in U.S. censuses as self-identification data items in which residents choose the race or, starting with the 2000 US Census, races with which they most closely identify. Respondents also indicate whether or not they are of Hispanic or Latino origin, which the census considers separately from race. While many see race and ethnicity as the same thing, ethnicity generally refers to a group of people whose members identify with each other through a common heritage and culture, as opposed to the implication of shared biological traits associated with the term “race.”
These categories, therefore, represent a social-political construct for the race or races that respondents consider themselves to be and “generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country. ” The concept of race, as outlined for the U.S. Census, has been described as not “scientific or anthropological” and takes into account “social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry,” using “appropriate scientific methodologies” that are not “primarily biological or genetic in reference. ” The race categories include both racial and national-origin groups. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.06%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity_in_the_U.S./10.6B%3A_Racial_Groups.txt |
An ethnic group is a group of people who share a common heritage, culture, and/or language; in the U.S., ethnicity often refers to race.
Learning Objectives
• Explain why ethnic and racial categories tend to overlap in the U.S.
Key Points
• In the United States of America, the term “ethnic” carries a different meaning from how it is commonly used in some other countries, due to the historical and ongoing significance of racial distinctions that categorize together what might otherwise have been viewed as ethnic groups.
• Ethnicity in U.S. therefore usually refers to collectives of related groups, having more to do with physical appearance, specifically skin color, rather than political boundaries.
• The formal and informal inscription of racialized groupings into law and social stratification schemes has bestowed upon race a fundamental social identification role in the United States.
Key Terms
• social stratification: The hierarchical arrangement of social classes, or castes, within a society.
• ethnic group: A group of people who identify with one another, especially on the basis of racial, cultural, or religious grounds.
An ethnic group is a group of people who identify with each other through a common heritage, which generally consists of a common culture and shared language or dialect. The group’s ethos or ideology may also stress common ancestry, religion, or race.
In the United States of America, the term “ethnic” carries a different meaning from how it is commonly used in some other countries. This is due to the historical and ongoing significance of racial distinctions that categorize together what might otherwise have been viewed as ethnic groups. For example, various ethnic, “national,” or linguistic groups from Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, Latin America, and Indigenous America have long been combined together as racial minority groups (currently designated as African American, Asian, Latino and Native American or American Indian, respectively).
While a sense of ethnic identity may coexist with racial identity (Chinese Americans among Asian or Irish American among European or White, for example), the long history of the United States as a settler, conqueror, and slave society, and the formal and informal inscription of racialized groupings into law and social stratification schemes has bestowed upon race a fundamental social identification role in the United States.
Examples of Overlapping Racial and Ethnic Categories in the U.S.
Ethnicity in U.S. therefore usually refers to collectives of related groups, having more to do with physical appearance, specifically skin color, rather than political boundaries. The word “nationality” is more commonly used for this purpose (e.g. Italian, Mexican, French, Russian, Japanese). Most prominently in the U.S., Latin American descended populations are grouped in a ” Hispanic ” or “Latino” ethnicity. The many previously designated “Oriental” ethnic groups are now classified as the “Asian” racial group for the census.
The terms “Black” and “African American,” while different, are both used as ethnic categories in the U.S. In the late 1980s, the term “African American” came into prominence as the most appropriate and politically correct race designation. While it was intended as a shift away from the racial injustices of America’s past often associated with the historical views of the “Black” race, it largely became a simple replacement for the terms Black, Colored, Negro and similar terms, referring to any individual of dark skin color regardless of geographical descent.
The term Caucasian generally describes some or all people whose ancestry can be traced to Europe, the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, North Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia. This includes European-colonized countries in the Americas, Australasia, and South Africa, among others. All the aforementioned are categorized as part of the “White” racial group, as per U.S. Census categorization. This category has been split into two groups: Hispanics and non-Hispanics (e.g. White non-Hispanic and White Hispanic. ) | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.06%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity_in_the_U.S./10.6C%3A_Ethnic_Groups.txt |
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the history and status of immigration (both legal and illegal) and the workforce in the United States
Key Points
• Immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth and cultural change. Different historical periods have brought distinct national groups, races and ethnicities to the United States.
• In recent years, immigration has increased substantially.
• American attitudes toward immigration are markedly ambivalent. In general, Americans have more positive attitudes toward groups that have been visible for a century or more, and much more negative attitude toward recent arrivals.
• An illegal immigrant in the United States is an alien (non-citizen) who has entered the United States without government permission and in violation of United States Nationality Law, or stayed beyond the termination date of a visa, also in violation of the law.
Key Terms
• immigration: The act of immigrating; the passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence.
• illegal immigration: When a person enters the United States without governmental permission and in violation of the United States Nationality Law, or stayed beyond the termination date of a visa, also in violation of the law.
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence. Immigration occurs for many reasons, including economic, political, family re-unification, natural disasters, or poverty. Many immigrants came to America to escape religious persecution or dire economic conditions. Most hoped coming to America would provide freedom and opportunity.
History
Immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth and cultural change. Different historical periods have brought distinct national groups, races and ethnicities to the United States. During the 17th century, approximately 175,000 Englishmen migrated to Colonial America. Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants. The mid-nineteenth century saw mainly an influx from northern Europe; the early twentieth-century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe; post-1965 mostly from Latin America and Asia.
Contemporary Immigration
In recent years, immigration has increased substantially. In 1965, ethnic quotas were removed; these quotas had restricted the number of immigrants allowed from different parts of the world. Immigration doubled between 1965 and 1970, and again between 1970 and 1990. Between 2000 and 2005, nearly 8 million immigrants entered the United States, more than in any other five-year period in the nation’s history. In 2006, the United States accepted more legal immigrants as permanent residents than all other countries in the world combined.
Recent Immigration Demographics
Until the 1930s most legal immigrants were male. By the 1990s, women accounted for just over half of all legal immigrants. Contemporary immigrants tend to be younger than the native population of the United States, with people between the ages of 15 and 34 substantially over-represented Immigrants are also more likely to be married and less likely to be divorced than native-born Americans of the same age.
Immigrants come from all over the world, but a significant number come from Latin America. In 1900, when the U.S. population was 76 million, there were an estimated 500,000 Hispanics. The Census Bureau projects that by 2050, one-quarter of the population will be of Hispanic descent. This demographic shift is largely fueled by immigration from Latin America.
Immigrants are likely to move to and live in areas populated by people with similar backgrounds. This phenomenon has held true throughout the history of immigration to the United States.
Public Opinion Toward Immigrants
American attitudes toward immigration are markedly ambivalent. American history is rife with examples of anti-immigrant opinion. Benjamin Franklin opposed German immigration, warning Germans would not assimilate. In the 1850s, the nativist Know Nothing movement opposed Irish immigration, promulgating fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants.
In general, Americans have more positive attitudes toward groups that have been visible for a century or more, and much more negative attitude toward recent arrivals.According to a 1982 national poll by the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut, “By high margins, Americans are telling pollsters it was a very good thing that Poles, Italians, and Jews emigrated to America. Once again, it’s the newcomers who are viewed with suspicion. This time, it’s the Mexicans, the Filipinos, and the people from the Caribbean who make Americans nervous. ”
One of the most important factors regarding public opinion about immigration is the level of unemployment; anti-immigrant sentiment is highest where unemployment is highest, and vice versa. In fact, in the United States, only 0.16 percent of the workforce are legal immigrants.
Illegal Immigration to the United States
An illegal immigrant in the United States is an alien (non-citizen) who has entered the United States without government permission and in violation of United States Nationality Law, or stayed beyond the termination date of a visa, also in violation of the law. Illegal immigrants continue to outpace the number of legal immigrants—a trend that’s held steady since the 1990s. The illegal immigrant population is estimated to be between 7 and 20 million. More than 50% of illegal immigrants are from Mexico.
While the majority of illegal immigrants continue to concentrate in places with existing large Hispanic communities, illegal immigrants are increasingly settling throughout the rest of the country. A percentage of illegal immigrants do not remain indefinitely but do return to their country of origin; they are often referred to as “sojourners”, for “they come to the United States for several years but eventually return to their home country. ”
The continuing practice of hiring unauthorized workers has been referred to as the magnet for illegal immigration. As a significant percentage of employers are willing to hire illegal immigrants for higher pay than they would typically receive in their former country, illegal immigrants have prime motivation to cross borders. But migration is expensive, and dangerous for those who enter illegally. Participants in debates on immigration in the early twenty-first century have called for increasing enforcement of existing laws governing illegal immigration to the United States, building a barrier along some or all of the 2,000-mile (3,200 km) U.S.-Mexico border, or creating a new guest worker program. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.06%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity_in_the_U.S./10.6D%3A_Immigration_and_Illegal_Immigration.txt |
Affirmative action refers refers to policies that take factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion into consideration.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss arguments for and against affirmative action
Key Points
• Affirmative action measures are intended to prevent discrimination against employees or applicants for employment, on the basis of “color, religion, sex, or national origin”.
• The controversy surrounding affirmative action’s effectiveness is often based on the idea of class inequality.
• Other opponents of affirmative action call it reverse discrimination, saying affirmative action requires the very discrimination it is seeking to eliminate.
Key Terms
• affirmative action: A policy or program providing advantages for people of a minority group who are seen to have traditionally been discriminated against, with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society through preferential access to education, employment, health care, social welfare, etc.
In the United States, affirmative action refers to equal opportunity employment measures that Federal contractors and subcontractors such as public universities and government agencies are legally required to adopt. These measures are intended to prevent discrimination against employees or applicants for employment on the basis of “color, religion, sex, or national origin”. Examples of affirmative action offered by the United States Department of Labor include outreach campaigns, targeted recruitment, employee and management development, and employee support programs.
The impetus towards affirmative action is to redress the disadvantages associated with overt historical discrimination. Further impetus is a desire to ensure that public institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and police forces, are more representative of the populations they serve.
Affirmative action is a subject of controversy. Some policies adopted as affirmative action, such as racial quotas or gender quotas for collegiate admission, have been criticized as a form of reverse discrimination, an implementation ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, though the Court also upheld affirmative action as a practice in a court case held simultaneously that year.
History of the Term
Affirmative action in the United States began as a tool to address the persisting inequalities for African Americans in the 1960s. This specific term was first used to describe US government policy in 1961. Directed to all government contracting agencies, President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925 mandated “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. ”
Four years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson outlined the basic social science view that supports such policies:
“Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in—by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child, and finally the man.”
Arguments Against Affirmative Action
The controversy surrounding affirmative action’s effectiveness is often based on the idea of class inequality. Opponents of racial affirmative action argue that the program actually benefits middle- and upper-class African Americans and Hispanic Americans at the expense of lower class European Americans and Asian Americans. This argument supports the idea of solely class-based affirmative action. America’s poor is disproportionately made up of people of color, so class-based affirmative action would disproportionately help people of color. This would eliminate the need for race-based affirmative action as well as reducing any disproportionate benefits for middle and upper class people of color.
Other opponents of affirmative action call it reverse discrimination, saying affirmative action requires the very discrimination it is seeking to eliminate. According to these opponents, this contradiction makes affirmative action counter-productive. Other opponents say affirmative action causes unprepared applicants to be accepted in highly demanding educational institutions or jobs which result in eventual failure. Other opponents say that affirmative action lowers the bar, and so denies those who strive for excellence on their own merit and the sense of real achievement.
Some opponents further claim that affirmative action has undesirable side-effects and that it fails to achieve its goals. They argue that it hinders reconciliation, replaces old wrongs with new wrongs, undermines the achievements of minorities, and encourages groups to identify themselves as disadvantaged even if they are not. It may increase racial tension and benefit the more privileged people within minority groups at the expense of the disenfranchised within majority groups (such as lower-class whites). Some opponents believe, among other things, that affirmative action devalues the accomplishments of people who belong to a group it is supposed to help, therefore making affirmative action counter-productive.
Implementation in Universities
In the US, a prominent form of affirmative action centers on access to education, particularly admission to universities and other forms of higher education. Race, ethnicity, native language, social class, geographical origin, parental attendance of the university in question (legacy admissions), and/or gender are sometimes taken into account when assessing the meaning of an applicant’s grades and test scores. Individuals can also be awarded scholarships and have fees paid on the basis of criteria listed above. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Bakke v. Regents that public universities (and other government institutions) could not set specific numerical targets based on race for admissions or employment. The Court said that “goals” and “timetables” for diversity could be set instead. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity/10.06%3A_Race_and_Ethnicity_in_the_U.S./10.6E%3A_Affirmative_Action.txt |
Multiculturalism is an ideology that promotes the institutionalization of communities containing multiple cultures.
Learning Objectives
• Describe how multiculturalism is addressed in the U.S.
Key Points
• Multiculturalism is generally applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, e.g. schools, businesses, neighborhoods, cities, or nations.
• In the United States, continuous mass immigration has been a feature of economy and society since the first half of the 19th century.
• The absorption of the stream of immigrants in itself became a prominent feature of America’s national myth, inspiring its own narrative about its past that is centered around multiculturalism and the embrace of newcomers from many different backgrounds.
Key Terms
• national myth: An inspiring narrative or anecdote about a nation’s past that serves as an important national symbol and affirms a set of national values.
• multiculturalism: A characteristic of a society that has many different ethnic or national cultures mingling freely. It can also refer to political or social policies which support or encourage such a coexistence. Important in this is the idea that cultural practices, no matter how unusual, should be tolerated as a measure of respect.
Multiculturalism is an ideology that promotes the institutionalization of communities containing multiple cultures. It is generally applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g. schools, businesses, neighborhoods, cities, or nations.
In a political context the term is used for a wide variety of meanings, ranging from the advocacy of equal respect for the various cultures in a society, to a policy of promoting the maintenance of cultural diversity, to policies in which people of various ethnic and religious groups are addressed by the authorities as defined by the group they belong to.
In the United States, multiculturalism is not clearly established in policy at the federal level. Instead, it has been addressed primarily through the school system with the rise of ethnic studies programs in higher education and attempts to make the grade school curricula more inclusive of the history and contributions of non-white peoples.
Multiculturalism and the National Myth
In the United States, continuous mass immigration has been a feature of economy and society since the first half of the 19th century. The absorption of the stream of immigrants in itself became a prominent feature of America’s national myth, inspiring its own narrative about its past.
This found particular expression in America as a “Melting Pot,” a metaphor that implies that all the immigrant cultures are mixed and amalgamated without state intervention. This metaphor also suggests that each individual immigrant, and each group of immigrants, assimilated into American society at their own pace. The Melting Pot tradition co-exists with a belief in national unity, dating from the American founding fathers:
“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs… This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties. ” —John Jay, First American Supreme Court Chief Justice, Federalist Paper No. 2
Multiculturalism as a Philosophy
As a philosophy, multiculturalism began as part of the pragmatism movement at the end of the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States, then as political and cultural pluralism at the turn of the twentieth. It was partly in response to a new wave of European imperialism in sub-Saharan Africa and the massive immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans to the United States and Latin America.
Philosophers, psychologists, historians, and early sociologists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, George Santayana, Horace Kallen, John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Alain Locke developed concepts of cultural pluralism, from which emerged what we understand today as multiculturalism. In Pluralistic Universe(1909), William James espoused the idea of a “plural society” and saw pluralism as “crucial to the formation of philosophical and social humanism to help build a better, more egalitarian society. ”
Multiculturalism in Education
The educational approach to multiculturalism has recently spread to the grade school system, as school systems try to rework their curricula to introduce students to diversity at an earlier age. This is often on the grounds that it is important for minority students to see themselves represented in the classroom. Studies estimate that the 46.3 million Americans ages 14 to 24 are the most diverse generation in American society.
Controversy over Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is a highly disputed topic in the United States. For example, in 2009 and 2010, controversy erupted in Texas as the state ‘s curriculum committee made several changes to the state’s school cirriculum requirements, often at the expense of minorities: juxtaposing Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address with that of Confederate president Jefferson Davis; debating removing Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and labor-leader César Chávez; and rejecting calls to include more Hispanic figures, in spite of the high Hispanic population in the state.
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Biology determines sex, while social norms determine gender.
Learning Objectives
• Define and differentiate between sex and gender
Key Points
• Though males and females have biological differences, they are more similar than is usually expected. Difference arises from cultural expectations.
• Gender takes many forms and is shaped by religious, political, legal, philosophical, linguistic, and other traditions.
• Social constructs around gender often have a biological component. For example, historically in many cultures women are seen as the weaker sex, both because they have been relegated to less powerful social roles and because biologically, women tend to have less muscle mass.
Key Terms
• gender: The socio-cultural phenomenon of the division of people into various categories such as male and female, with each having associated roles, expectations, stereotypes, etc.
• sex: Either of two main divisions (female or male) into which many organisms can be placed, according to reproductive function or organs.
It is important to distinguish between sex and gender. Sex refers to a person’s biological make-up as male or female. Typically, a person’s genotype (genetic makeup) and phenotype (observable traits) are used to determine a person’s sex. Males are defined as having an XY 23rd chromosome, while females are defined as having an XX 23rd chromosome (though tests have revealed variations in chromosomes, including XXY, XYY, and XXX). Scientists have linked a person’s 23rd chromosome to the development of a sexed phenotype. Anatomically, males and females have different reproductive organs: a penis, testicles, and scrotum for males, and a vagina, uterus, and ovaries for females. Other anatomical differences include the development of breasts among females, and the presence of a menstrual cycle.
Male and female are generally understood as discrete categories, often referred to as “opposite” sexes. In fact, the majority of male and female biology is identical. Male and female reproductive systems are distinct, but otherwise most bodily systems function the same way. With regards to digestive, respiratory, circulatory, lymphatic, musculoskeletal, nervous, immune, sensory, endocrine, and integumentary systems, males and females have many more similarities than differences. Likewise, males and females have nearly all the same hormones present in their bodies, though the amount of certain hormones (such as estrogen and testosterone) varies.
While sex is the determination of whether a person is biologically male or female, gender is the sociocultural determination of
understanding of what it means to be a man or a woman. Sex is largely constant across different cultures; in virtually any country, a person with XY chromosomes and male reproductive organs is considered male. Gender, however, takes many forms and is shaped by religious, political, legal, philosophical, linguistic, and other traditions. For example, in some countries, wearing make-up is associated with women and is seen as feminine. Elsewhere, men routinely wear make-up and it is seen as masculine. Across history in most parts of the world, women have been denied access to economic independence and legal and political rights more often than men have. This oppression is based on cultural understandings of women as the weaker sex, but is often linked to females’ biological capacity for bearing and nursing children.
The Trouble with Women! (1959): Are Brad’s problems really the result of qualities that are innate to women? Is this a question of sex, gender or simply sexism?
Some physical differences between the male and female sexes are thought to occur as a result of both biological and cultural processes. For example, on average, males have more upper body strength than females. This difference is partially the result of differences in the biological development of the musculoskeletal system, but is exacerbated by the cultural tendency for men to use their upper body muscles more than women through physical labor and athletics. Similarly, males have a shorter life expectancy than females do, on average. Again, this may partially result from different biological make-ups, but decreased life-expectancy gaps in developed countries proves that cultural institutions contribute to the gap. When men and women have similar careers and lifestyles, the life-expectancy gap decreases.
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Gender socialization is the process by which males and females are informed about the norms and behaviors associated with their sex.
Learning Objectives
• Explain the influence of socialization on gender roles and their impact
Key Points
• Gender socialization is the process by which individuals are taught how to socially behave in accordance with their assigned gender, which is assigned at birth based on their biological sex.
• Today it is largely believed that most gender differences are attributed to differences in socialization, rather than genetic and biological factors.
• Gender stereotypes can be a result of gender socialization: girls and boys are expected to act in certain ways that are socialized from birth. Children and adults who do not conform to gender stereotypes are often ostracized by peers for being different.
• While individuals are typically socialized into viewing gender as a masculine-feminine binary, there are individuals who challenge and complicate this notion. These individuals believe that gender is fluid and not a rigid binary.
Key Terms
• Gender socialization: The process of educating and instructing males and females as to the norms, behaviors, values, and beliefs of group membership as men or women.
• gender: The socio-cultural phenomenon of the division of people into various categories such as male and female, with each having associated roles, expectations, stereotypes, etc.
• sex: Either of two main divisions (female or male) into which many organisms can be placed, according to reproductive function or organs.
Sociologists and other social scientists generally attribute many of the behavioral differences between genders to socialization. Socialization is the process of transferring norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors to group members. The most intense period of socialization is during childhood, when adults who are members of a particular cultural group instruct young children on how to behave in order to comply with social norms. Gender is included in this process; individuals are taught how to socially behave in accordance with their assigned gender, which is assigned at birth based on their biological sex (for instance, male babies are given the gender of “boy”, while female babies are given the gender of “girl”). Gender socialization is thus the process of educating and instructing males and females as to the norms, behaviors, values, and beliefs of group membership.
Preparations for gender socialization begin even before the birth of the child. One of the first questions people ask of expectant parents is the sex of the child. This is the beginning of a social categorization process that continues throughout life. Preparations for the birth often take the infant’s sex into consideration (e.g., painting the room blue if the child is a boy, pink for a girl). Today it is largely believed that most gender differences are attributed to differences in socialization, rather than genetic and biological factors.
Gender stereotypes can be a result of gender socialization. Girls and boys are expected to act in certain ways, and these ways are socialized from birth by many parents (and society). For example, girls are expected to be clean and quiet, while boys are messy and loud. As children get older, gender stereotypes become more apparent in styles of dress and choice of leisure activities. Boys and girls who do not conform to gender stereotypes are usually ostracized by same-age peers for being different. This can lead to negative effects, such as lower self-esteem.
In Western contexts, gender socialization operates as a binary, or a concept that is exclusively comprised of two parts. In other words, individuals are socialized into conceiving of their gender as either masculine (male) or feminine (female). Identities are therefore normatively constructed along this single parameter. However, some individuals do not feel that they fall into the gender binary and they choose to question or challenge the male-masculine / female-feminine binary. For example, individuals that identify as transgender feel that their gender identity does not match their biological sex. Individuals that identify as genderqueer challenge classifications of masculine and feminine, and may identify as somewhere other than male and female, in between male and female, a combination of male and female, or a third (or forth, or fifth, etc.) gender altogether. These identities demonstrate the fluidity of gender, which is so frequently thought to be biological and immutable. Gender fluidity also shows how gender norms are learned and either accepted or rejected by the socialized individual. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.02%3A_Gender_and_Socialization/11.2A%3A_Gender_Socialization.txt |
Social constructivists propose that there is no inherent truth to gender; it is constructed by social expectations and gender performance.
Learning Objectives
• Explain Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity
Key Points
• Social constructionism is the notion that people’s understanding of reality is partially, if not entirely, socially situated.
• Gender is a social identity that needs to be contextualized.
• Individuals internalize social expectations for gender norms and behave accordingly.
Key Terms
• Gender performativity: Gender Performativity is a term created by post-structuralist feminist philosopher Judith Butler in her 1990 book Gender Trouble, which has subsequently been used in a variety of academic fields that describes how individuals participate in social constructions of gender.
• social constructionism: The idea that social institutions and knowledge are created by actors within the system, rather than having any inherent truth on their own.
• essentialism: The view that objects have properties that are essential to them.
Social Constructionism
The social construction of gender comes out of the general school of thought entitled social constructionism. Social constructionism proposes that everything people “know” or see as “reality” is partially, if not entirely, socially situated. To say that something is socially constructed does not mitigate the power of the concept. Take, for example, money. Money is a socially constructed reality. Paper bills are worth nothing independent of the value individuals ascribe to them. The dollar is only worth as much as value as Americans are willing to ascribe to it. Note that the dollar only works in its own currency market; it holds no value in areas that don’t use the dollar. Nevertheless, the dollar is extremely powerful within its own domain.
These basic theories of social constructionism can be applied to any issue of study pertaining to human life, including gender. Is gender an essential category or a social construct ? If it is a social construct, how does it function? Who benefits from the way that gender is constructed? A social constructionist view of gender looks beyond categories and examines the intersections of multiple identities and the blurring of the boundaries between essentialist categories. This is especially true with regards to categories of male and female, which are viewed typically as binary and opposite. Social constructionism seeks to blur the binary and muddle these two categories, which are so frequently presumed to be essential.
Judith Butler and Gender Performativity
Judith Butler is one of the most prominent social theorists currently working on issues pertaining to the social construction of gender. Butler is a trained philosopher and has oriented her work towards feminism and queer theory. Butler’s most known work is Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, published in 1991, which argues for gender performativity. This means that gender is not an essential category. The repetitious performances of “male” and “female” in accordance with social norms reifies the categories, creating the appearance of a naturalized and essential binary. Gender is never a stable descriptor of an individual, but an individual is always “doing” gender, performing or deviating from the socially accepted performance of gender stereotypes. Doing gender is not just about acting in a particular way. It is about embodying and believing certain gender norms and engaging in practices that map on to those norms. These performances normalize the essentialism of gender categories. In other words, by doing gender, we reinforce the notion that there are only two mutually exclusive categories of gender. The internalized belief that men and women are essentially different is what makes men and women behave in ways that appear essentially different. Gender is maintained as a category through socially constructed displays of gender.
Doing gender is fundamentally a social relationship. One does gender in order to be perceived by others in a particular way, either as male, female, or as troubling those categories. Certainly, gender is internalized and acquires significance for the individual; some individuals want to feel feminine or masculine. Social constructionists might argue that because categories are only formed within a social context, even the affect of gender is in some ways a social relation. Moreover, we hold ourselves and each other for our presentation of gender, or how we “measure up.” We are aware that others evaluate and characterize our behavior on the parameter of gender. Social constructionists would say that gender is interactional rather than individual—it is developed through social interactions. Gender is also said to be omnirelevant, meaning that people are always judging our behavior to be either male or female. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.02%3A_Gender_and_Socialization/11.2B%3A_The_Social_Construction_of_Gender.txt |
Gender identity is one’s sense of one’s own gender. It is the result of socialization, but it also has a biological basis.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the difference between biological and social construction of gender identity
Key Points
• Gender identity typically falls on a gender binary —individuals are expected to exclusively identify either as male or female. However, some individuals believe that this binary model is illegitimate and identify as a third, or mixed, gender.
• Individuals whose gender identity aligns with their sex organs are said to be cisgender. Transgender individuals are those whose gender identity does not align with their sex organs.
• Gender identity discourse derives from medical and psychological conceptions of gender. There is vigorous debate over biological versus environmental causes of the development of one’s gender identity.
• As gender identities come to be more disputed, new legal frontiers are opening on the basis that a male/female gender binary, as written into the law, discriminates against individuals who either identify as the opposite of their biological sex or who do not identify as either male or female.
• The extreme cultural variation in notions of gender indicate the socially constructed nature of gender identity.
Key Terms
• cisgender: Identifying with or experiencing a gender the same as one’s biological sex or that is affirmed by society, e.g. being both male-gendered & male-sexed.
• transgender: Not identifying with culturally conventional gender roles and categories of male or female; having changed gender identity from male to female or female to male, or identifying with elements of both, or having some other gender identity.
• gender binary: A view of gender whereby people are categorized exclusively as either male or female, often basing gender on biological sex.
Gender identity is one’s sense of being male, female, or a third gender. Gender identity typically falls on a gender binary—individuals are expected to exclusively identify either as male or female. However, some individuals believe that this binary model is illegitimate and identify as a third, or mixed, gender. Gender identity is socially constructed, yet it still pertains to one’s sense of self. Gender identity is not only about how one perceives one’s own gender, but also about how one presents one’s gender to the public.
Cisgender and Transgender
Individuals whose gender identity aligns with their sex organs are said to be cisgender. Transgender individuals are those whose gender identity does not align with their sex organs. These people generally dress according to how they feel but do not make an drastic change within their sexual organs. Transsexuals, however, take drastic measures to assume their believed identity. This includes hormone therapy and sexual reassignment operations. Recently, there has been a growing gender/queer movement consisting of individuals who do not feel that their sex organs are mismatched to their gender identity, but who still wish to trouble the notion of a gender binary, considering it overly simplistic and misrepresentative.
Causes of Confusion in Gender Identity
What causes individuals to sense a sort of confusion between their biological gender and their gender identity? This question is hotly contested, with no clear answer. Some scientists argue that the sense of confusion is a biological result of the pre- and post-natal swinging of hormone levels and genetic regulation. Sociologists tend to emphasize the environmental impetuses for gender identity. Certainly, socialization, or the process of transferring norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors to group members, plays a significant part in how individuals learn and internalize gender roles and subsequently impact their gender identity.
Though the medical emphasis in some conversations about gender identity is frequently scrutinized by sociologists, there is clearly some biological basis to gender, even if it has more to do with appearances and social presentation than identity formation. Women have two X chromosomes, where men have one X and one Y chromosome. However, despite the deep relationship to biology, gender identity cannot only be biologically determined. However, gender identity has a larger social component that needs to be considered. For example, although a person may be biologically male, “he” may feel more comfortable with a female identity, which is a social construction based on how he feels, not his physical makeup.
Gender Identities and Law
As gender identities come to be more disputed, new legal frontiers are opening on the basis that a male/female gender binary, as written into the law, discriminates against individuals who either identify as the opposite of their biological sex or who identify as neither male nor female. On college campuses, gender-restrictive dorm housing is facing opposition by individuals who identify as neither a man nor a woman. Many public spaces and workplaces are instituting gender-neutral bathroom facilities. Gender identity has become a piece of international law as a branch of human rights doctrines. The Yogyakarta Principles, drafted by international legal scholars in 2006, provide a definition of gender identity in its preamble. In the Principles “gender identity” refers to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the biological sex assigned at birth, including the person’s sense of the body and other expressions of gender.
Gender Identities across Cultures
Gender identities, and the malleability of the gender binary, vary across cultures. In some Polynesian societies, fa’afafine are considered to be a third gender alongside male and female. Fa’afafine are accepted as a natural gender and are neither looked down upon nor discriminated against. They are biologically male, but dress and behave in a manner that Polynesians typically consider female. Fa’afafine are often physiologically unable to reproduce. Fa’afafine also reinforce their femininity by claiming to be only attracted to and receiving sexual attention from heterosexual men.
In the Indian subcontinent, a hijra is usually considered to be neither male nor female. The hijra form a third gender, although they do not enjoy the same acceptance and respect as individuals who identify along the gender binary.
The xanith form an accepted third gender in Oman, a society that also holds a gender binary as a social norm. The xanith are male, homosexual prostitutes whose dressing is male, featuring pastel colors rather than the white clothes traditionally worn by men, but their mannerisms are coded as female. Xanith can mingle with women where men cannot. However, similar to other men in Oman, xanith can marry women and prove their masculinity by consummating the marriage. This extreme cultural variation in notions of gender indicate the socially constructed nature of gender identity. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.02%3A_Gender_and_Socialization/11.2C%3A_Gender_Identity_in_Everyday_Life.txt |
Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be appropriate for people of a specific sex.
Learning Objectives
• Describe how gender roles in the U.S. have changed since the 1950’s
Key Points
• Gender roles are never universal, even within a single country, and they are always historically and culturally contingent.
• Gender role theory emphasizes environmental conditions and the influence of socialization, or the process of transferring norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors to group members, in learning how to behave as a male or female.
• Current trends toward a total integration model of gender roles is reflected in women’s education, professional achievement, and family income contributions.
Key Terms
• nuclear family: a family unit consisting of at most a father, mother and dependent children.
• socialization: The process of learning one’s culture and how to live within it.
• Division of labor: A division of labour is the dividing and specializing of cooperative labour into specifically circumscribed tasks and roles.
Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex. There has been significant variation in gender roles over cultural and historical spans, and all gender roles are culturally and historically contingent. Much scholarly work on gender roles addresses the debate over the environmental or biological causes for the development of gender roles. The following section seeks to orient the reader to the sociological theorization of the gender role and discuss its application in an American context.
Gender and Social Role Theory
Gender role theory posits that boys and girls learn to perform one’s biologically assigned gender through particular behaviors and attitudes. Gender role theory emphasizes the environmental causes of gender roles and the impact of socialization, or the process of transferring norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors to group members, in learning how to behave as a male or a female. Social role theory proposes that the social structure is the underlying force in distinguishing genders and that sex-differentiated behavior is driven by the division of labor between two sexes within a society. The division of labor creates gender roles, which in turn, lead to gendered social behavior.
Gender Roles in the United States
With the popularization of social constructionist theories of gender roles, it is paramount that one recognize that all assertions about gender roles are culturally and historically contingent. This means that what might be true of gender roles in the United States for one cultural group likely is not true for another cultural group. Similarly, gender roles in the United States have changed drastically over time. There is no such thing as a universal, generalizable statement about gender roles.
One main thread in discussions about gender roles in the United States has been the historical evolution from a single-income family, or a family unit in which one spouse (typically the father) is responsible for the family income, to a dual-income family, or a family unit in which both spouses generate income. Before the rise of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s and the influx of women into the workforce in the 1980s, women were largely responsible for dealing with home matters, while men worked and earned income outside the home. While some claim that this was a sexist structure, others maintain that the structure simply represented a division of labor, or a social system in which a particular segment of the population performs one type of labor and another segment performs another type.
Nuclear Family Models
In 1955, sociologist Talcott Parsons developed a model of nuclear families in the United States that addressed gender roles. Family structures vary across cultures and history, and the term nuclear family refers to a family unit of two parents and their children. Parsons developed two models of gender roles within the nuclear family. His first model involved total role segregation; men and women would be trained and educated in gender-specific institutions, and high professional qualifications and the workplace would be intended for men. Women would be primarily focused on housekeeping, childcare, and children’s education. Male participation in domestic activity would be only partially desired and socially acceptable. Further, in the case of conflict, the man would have the final say. Parsons contrasted this first model with a second that involved the total integration of roles. In the second model, men and women would be educated in the same institutions and study the same content in classes. Outside the educational milieu, women and men would both perceive career to be important, and equal professional opportunities for men and women would be considered socially necessary. Both parties in a marriage would bear responsibility for housework and child rearing. Finally, neither gender would systematically dominate decision making.
Current Trends
Of course, neither of Parsons’s models accurately described the United States in the 1950s, and neither model accurately describes the United States in the present day. However, total role segregation was closer to the reality of the United States in the 1950s, whereas a total integration of roles is increasingly common in the United States today.
The national trend toward a total integration of gender roles is reflected in women’s education, professional achievement, and family income contributions. Currently, more women than men are enrolled in college, and women are expected to earn more graduate degrees than men over the next several years. In 2005, 22% of American households had two income earners, which suggests the presence of women in the workforce. However, in most contexts, women are still expected to be the primary homemakers, even if they are contributing to household income by working outside the home. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.02%3A_Gender_and_Socialization/11.2D%3A_Gender_Roles_in_the_U.S..txt |
Gender roles vary widely across different cultural contexts.
Learning Objectives
• Compare and contrast gender roles in different cultures
Key Points
• It is impossible to generalize what life is like for one woman from assumptions about gender roles in different countries.
• To assess what daily life is like for women, one must learn the particulars about the cultural and historical moment she occupies.
• In Sweden, all working parents are entitled to sixteen months paid leave per child. To encourage greater paternal involvement in childrearing, a minimum of two months out of the sixteen is required to be used by the “minority” parent, usually the father.
• 62% of Chileans are opposed to full gender equality and believe that women should limit themselves to the roles of mother and wife. Until recently, women lost their right to administer their own assets once they were married, and were required by law to obey their husbands.
• Women in Japan are usually well-educated and employed, though gender dynamics emerge in regards to social pressure to find a husband. Historically, gender has been an important principle of Japanese social stratification, but gender differences have varied over time and within social class.
Key Terms
• Michelle Bachelet: Chile’s first female president (2006-2010).
• parental leave: A leave of absence from a job for a parent to take care of a baby.
Gender roles vary significantly across cultures. Indeed, all gender roles are culturally and historically contingent, meaning that they cannot be analyzed outside of their cultural and historical contexts. This section attempts to provide a few examples of variation in gender roles and the lives of women in various places around the world. These small glimpses are not universal by any means, but this overview should provide a brief summary of just how much women’s lives vary and how much women’s lives seem similar across national boundaries.
Gender Roles in Sweden
Governments in Europe are typically more active in governing the lives of their citizens than the U.S. government. As such, European governments have used their social powers to encourage equality between men and women. In Sweden, for example, all working parents are entitled to sixteen months paid leave per child, with the cost shared by the government and the employer. To encourage greater paternal involvement in childrearing, a minimum of two months out of the sixteen is required to be used by the “minority” parent, usually the father. Through policies such as parental leave, European states actively work to promote equality between genders in childrearing and professional lives.
Gender Roles In Chile
As is the case for many women in the United States and in Europe, many women in Chile feel pressure to conform to traditional gender roles. A 2010 study by the United Nations Development Programme found that 62% of Chileans are opposed to full gender equality and expressed the belief that women should limit themselves to the roles of mother and wife. These social barriers to gender equality exist in the face of legal equality.
Chilean law has recently undergone some drastic changes to support gender equality. Until recently, women lost their right to administer their own assets once they were married, with their husbands receiving all of their wealth. Now, a woman is allowed to maintain her own property. Previously, women were legally required to live with and be faithful and obedient to her husband, but now it is not law.
Chile grants both men and women the right to vote and had one of the first female presidents in the world. From 2006 until 2010, Michelle Bachelet served as Chile’s first female president. Women are gaining increasingly prominent positions in various aspects of government. The prominence of female politicians is working to undo traditional stereotypes of women belonging only in the domestic sphere.
Gender Roles in Japan
Women in Japan are usually well-educated and employed, though gender dynamics emerge in regards to social pressure to find a husband. Historically, gender has been an important principle of Japanese social stratification but the cultural elaboration of gender differences has, of course, varied over time and within social class. After World War II, the legal position of women was redefined by the occupation authorities. Individual rights were given precedence over obligation to family. Women were guaranteed the right to choose spouses and occupations, to inherit and own property in their own names, and to retain custody of their children. Women were granted the right to vote in 1946. Legally, few barriers to women’s equal participation in social and professional life remain in Japan.
However, gender inequality continues in family life, the workplace, and popular values. A common Japanese proverb that continues to influence gender roles is “good wife, wise mother. ” The proverb reflects the still common social belief, encouraged by men and women alike, that it is in the woman’s, her children’s, and society’s best interests for her to stay home and devote herself to her children. In most households, women are responsible for family budgets and make independent decisions about the education, careers, and life styles of their families.
Better educational prospects are improving women’s professional prospects. Immediately after World War II, the common image of womanhood was that of a secretary who becomes a housewife and mother after marriage. But a new generation of educated woman is emerging who wishes to establish a career in the workforce. Japanese women are joining the labor force in unprecedented numbers such that around 50% of the workforce is comprised of women. One important change is that married women have begun to participate in the work force. In the 1950s, most female employees were young and single; 62% of the female labor force had never been married. By 1987, 68% of the female workforce was married and only 23% had never been married.
Despite changes in the workforce, women are still expected to get married. It is common for unmarried women to experience anxiety and social pressure as a result of her unwed status.
These examples from Sweden, Chile, and Japan hardly scratch the surface of demonstrating some of the extreme variation in gender roles worldwide.
11.2F: Childhood Socialization
Gender roles are taught from infancy through primary socialization, or the type of socialization that occurs in childhood and adolescence.
Learning Objectives
• Describe how society socializes children to accept gender norms
Key Points
• Gender is instilled through socialization immediately from birth. Consider the gender norms with which society imbues infants. The most archetypal example is the notion that male babies like blue things while female babies like pink things.
• The example set by an individual’s family is also important for socialization. For example, children who grow up in a family with the husband a breadwinner and the wife a homemaker will tend to accept this as the social norm.
• Children sometimes resist gender norms by behaving in ways more commonly associated with the opposite gender.
Key Terms
• socialization: The process of learning one’s culture and how to live within it.
• primary socialization: The socialization that takes place early in life, as a child and adolescent.
• secondary socialization: The socialization that takes place throughout one’s life, both as a child and as one encounters new groups that require additional socialization.
Social norms pertaining to gender are developed through socialization, the lifelong process of inheriting, interpreting, and disseminating norms, customs, and ideologies.The process of socialization continues throughout one’s life and is constantly renegotiated, but socialization begins as soon as one is born. Sociologists divide socialization into two different parts. Primary socialization takes place early in life, as a child and adolescent. Secondary socialization refers to the socialization that takes place throughout one’s life, both as a child and as one encounters new groups that require additional socialization.
Gender is instilled through socialization immediately from birth. Consider the gender norms with which society imbues infants: The most archetypal example is the notion that male babies like blue things while female babies like pink things. When a boy gets a football for his birthday and a girl receives a doll, this also socializes children to accept gender norms. The example set by an individual’s family is also important for socialization; children who grow up in a family with the husband a breadwinner and the wife a homemaker will tend to accept this as the social norm, while those who grow up in families with female breadwinners, single parents, or same-sex couples will develop different ideas of gender norms.
Because gender norms are perpetuated immediately upon birth, many sociologists study what happens when children fail to adopt the expected gender norms rather than the norms themselves. This is the standard model of studying deviance in order to understand the norm that undergirds the deviant activity. Children can resist gender norms by insisting on dressing in clothing more typically associated with the other gender, playing with toys more typically associated with the other gender, or having opposite-sex playmates. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.02%3A_Gender_and_Socialization/11.2E%3A_The_Cross-Cultural_Perspective.txt |
Adolescence is a transitional stage of biological, cognitive and social development that prepares individuals for taking on adult roles.
Learning Objectives
• Describe the three general approaches to understanding identity development
Key Points
• Identity development is a normative process of change in both the content and structure of how people think about themselves. Identity development encompasses the following notions: self-concept, sense of identity and self-esteem.
• Self-concept is the awareness of the self in relation to a variety of different characteristics and concepts.
• A sense of identity is much more integrated and less conflicting than the self-concept, as an identity is a coherent sense of self that is consistent across different contexts and circumstances past, present and future.
• Self-esteem is one’s perception of and feelings toward one’s self-concept and identity.
• Familial, peer and sexual/romantic relationships exert a siginficant influence over adolescent development and can encourage either positive or negative outcomes.
Key Terms
• identity: A coherent sense of self stable across circumstances and including past experiences and future goals.
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and psychological human development. The period of adolescence is most closely associated with the teenage years, although its physical, psychological and cultural expressions can begin earlier and end later. In studying adolescent development, adolescence can be defined biologically as the physical transition marked by the onset of puberty and the termination of physical growth; cognitively, as changes in the ability to think abstractly and multi-dimensionally; and socially as a period of preparation for adult roles. Major pubertal and biological changes include changes to the sex organs, height, weight and muscle mass, as well as major changes in brain structure and organization. Cognitive advances encompass both increases in knowledge and the ability to think abstractly and to reason more effectively. This is also a time when adolescents start to explore gender identity and sexuality in depth.
Identity Development
Among the most common beliefs about adolescence is that it is the time when teens form their personal identities. Empirical studies confirm a normative process of change in both the content and structure of one’s thoughts about the self. Researchers have used three general approaches to understanding identity development: self-concept, sense of identity and self-esteem.
Self-Concept
Early in adolescence, cognitive developments result in greater self-awareness, greater awareness of others and their thoughts and judgments, the ability to think about abstract, future possibilities, and the ability to consider multiple possibilities at once. While children define themselves with physical traits, adolescents define themselves based on their values, thoughts and opinions. Adolescents can now conceptualize multiple “possible selves” they could become and long-term possibilities and consequences of their choices. Exploring these possibilities may result in abrupt changes in self-presentation as the adolescent chooses or rejects qualities and behaviors, trying to guide the actual self toward the ideal self (who the adolescent wishes to be) and away from the feared self (who the adolescent does not want to be). In terms of gender socialization, boys and girls start to gravitate toward traditional roles. For example, girls may take more liberal art type classes while boys are more physical. Boys and girls tend to socialize together, although dating starts to occur. Girls generally look to their mothers or female role models for guidance, while boys tend to identify more with their fathers or male role models.
Sense of Identity
Unlike the conflicting aspects of self-concept, identity represents a coherent sense of self stable across circumstances and including past experiences and future goals. Development psychologist Erik Erikson describes adolescence as the period during which individuals ponder the questions: who am I and what can I be? As they make the transition from childhood to adulthood, adolescents ponder the roles they will play in the adult world. Initially, they are apt to experience some role confusion—mixed ideas and feelings about the specific ways in which they will fit into society—and may experiment with a variety of behaviors and activities. For example, a girl may want to pursue a career that is predominantly male, and if she is stifled by her sense of female identity, she may end up with a lifetime of regret. The same is true of males wishing to pursue a female-dominated career. Erikson proposed that most adolescents eventually achieve a sense of identity regarding who they are and where their lives are headed.
Self-Esteem
The final major aspect of identity formation is self-esteem, which is one’s thoughts and feelings about one’s self-concept and identity. Contrary to popular belief, there is no empirical evidence for a significant drop in self-esteem over the course of adolescence. “Barometric self-esteem” fluctuates rapidly and can cause severe distress and anxiety, but baseline self-esteem remains highly stable across adolescence.The validity of global self-esteem scales has been questioned, and many suggest that more specific scales might reveal more about the adolescent experience. For girls, they are most likely to enjoy high self-esteem when engaged in supportive relationships with friends, as the most important function of friendship to them is having someone who can provide social and moral support. In contrast, boys are more concerned with establishing and asserting their independence and defining their relation to authority. As such, they are more likely to derive high self-esteem from their ability to successfully influence their friends.
Peers
Peer groups are especially important during adolescence, a period of development characterized by a dramatic increase in time spent with peers and a decrease in adult supervision. Adolescents also associate with friends of the opposite sex much more than in childhood and tend to identify with larger groups of peers based on shared characteristics. Peer groups offer members the opportunity to develop various social skills like empathy, sharing and leadership.
Romance and Sexual Activity
Romantic relationships tend to increase in prevalence throughout adolescence. The typical duration of relationships increases throughout the teenage years as well. This constant increase in the likelihood of a long-term relationship can be explained by sexual maturation and the development of cognitive skills necessary to maintain a romantic bond, although these skills are not strongly developed until late adolescence. Overall, positive romantic relationships among adolescents can result in long-term benefits. High-quality romantic relationships are associated with higher commitment in early adulthood and are positively associated with self-esteem, self-confidence and social competence. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.02%3A_Gender_and_Socialization/11.2G%3A_Adolescent_Socialization.txt |
Masculine and feminine individuals generally differ in how they communicate with others.
Learning Objectives
• Explain and illustrate gender differences in social interactions
Key Points
• Differences between ” gender cultures ” influence the way that people of different genders communicate. These differences begin at childhood.
• Traditionally, masculine people and feminine people communicate with people of their own gender in different ways.
• Through communication we learn about what qualities and activities our culture prescribes to our sex.
Key Terms
• gender: The socio-cultural phenomenon of the division of people into various categories such as male and female, with each having associated roles, expectations, stereotypes, etc.
• gender culture: The set of behaviors or practices associated with masculinity and femininity.
Social and cultural norms can significantly influence both the expression of gender identity, and the nature of the interactions between genders.
Differences between “gender cultures” influence the way that people of different genders communicate. These differences begin at childhood. Maltz and Broker’s research showed that the games children play contribute to socializing children into masculine and feminine cultures. For example, girls playing house promotes personal relationships, and playing house does not necessarily have fixed rules or objectives. Boys, however, tend to play more competitive team sports with different goals and strategies. These differences as children cause women to operate from assumptions about communication, and use rules for communication that differ significantly from those endorsed by most men.
Gender Differences in Social Interaction
Masculine and feminine cultures and individuals generally differ in how they communicate with others. For example, feminine people tend to self-disclose more often than masculine people, and in more intimate details. Likewise, feminine people tend to communicate more affection, and with greater intimacy and confidence than masculine people. Generally speaking, feminine people communicate more and prioritize communication more than masculine people.
Traditionally, masculine people and feminine people communicate with people of their own gender in different ways. Masculine people form friendships with other masculine people based on common interests, while feminine people build friendships with other feminine people based on mutual support. However, both genders initiate opposite-gender friendships based on the same factors. These factors include proximity, acceptance, effort, communication, common interests, affection and novelty.
Context is very important when determining how we communicate with others. It is important to understand what script it is appropriate to use in each respective relationship. Specifically, understanding how affection is communicated in a given context is extremely important. For example, masculine people expect competition in their friendships.They avoid communicating weakness and vulnerability. They avoid communicating personal and emotional concerns. Masculine people tend to communicate affection by including their friends in activities and exchanging favors. Masculine people tend to communicate with each other shoulder-to-shoulder (e.g., watching sports on a television).
In contrast, feminine people are more likely to communicate weakness and vulnerability. In fact, they may seek out friendships more in these times. For this reason, feminine people often feel closer to their friends than masculine people do. Feminine people tend to value their friends for listening and communicating non-critically, communicating support, communicating feelings of enhanced self-esteem, communicating validation, offering comfort and contributing to personal growth. Feminine people tend to communicate with each other face-to-face (e.g., meeting together to talk over lunch).
Communication and Gender Cultures
A communication culture is a group of people with an existing set of norms regarding how they communicate with each other. These cultures can be categorized as masculine or feminine. Gender cultures are primarily created and sustained by interaction with others. Through communication we learn about what qualities and activities our culture prescribes to our sex. While it is commonly believed that our sex is the root source of differences and how we relate and communicate to others, it is actually gender that plays a larger role. Whole cultures can be broken down into masculine and feminine, each differing in how they get along with others through different styles of communication. Julia T. Wood’s studies explain that “communication produces and reproduces cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity. ” Masculine and feminine cultures differ dramatically in when, how, and why they use communication.
Communication Styles
Deborah Tannen’s studies found these gender differences in communication styles (where men more generally refers to masculine people, and women correspondingly refers to feminine people):
• Men tend to talk more than women in public situations, but women tend to talk more than men at home.
• Women are more inclined to face each other and make eye contact when talking, while men are more likely to look away from each other.
• Men tend to jump from topic to topic, but women tend to talk at length about one topic.
• When listening, women make more noises such as “mm-hmm” and “uh-huh”, while men are more likely to listen silently.
• Women are inclined to express agreement and support, while men are more inclined to debate.
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The functionalist perspective of gender roles suggests that gender roles exist to maximize social efficiency.
Learning Objectives
• Describe gender inequality from the view of the functionalist perspective
Key Points
• The functionalist perspective sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation and broadly focuses on the social structures that shape society as a whole.
• This theory suggests that gender inequalities exist as an efficient way to create a division of labor, or as a social system in which a particular segment of the population is clearly responsible for certain acts of labor and another segment is clearly responsible for other labor acts.
• The feminist movement takes the position that functionalism neglects the suppression of women within the family structure.
Key Terms
• functionalist perspective of gender inequality: A theory that suggests that gender inequalities exist as an efficient way to create a division of labor, or a social system in which a particular segment of the population is clearly responsible for certain acts of labor and another segment is clearly responsible for other labor acts.
• The Functionalist Perspective: A broad social theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.
• Division of labor: A division of labour is the dividing and specializing of cooperative labour into specifically circumscribed tasks and roles.
The functionalist perspective sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole, and looks at both social structure and social functions. Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements, namely: norms, customs, traditions, and institutions. A common analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer, presents these parts of society as “organs” that work toward the proper functioning of the “body” as a whole.
The functionalist perspective of gender inequality was most robustly articulated in the 1940s and 1950s, and largely developed by Talcott Parsons’ model of the nuclear family. This theory suggests that gender inequalities exist as an efficient way to create a division of labor, or as a social system in which particular segments are clearly responsible for certain, respective acts of labor. The division of labor works to maximize resources and efficiency. A structural functionalist view of gender inequality applies the division of labor to view predefined gender roles as complementary: women take care of the home while men provide for the family. Thus gender, like other social institutions, contributes to the stability of society as a whole.
In sociological research, functional prerequisites are the basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, and money) that an individual requires to live above the poverty line. Functional prerequisites may also refer to the factors that allow a society to maintain social order. According to structural functionalists, gender serves to maintain social order by providing and ensuring the stability of such functional prerequisites.
This view has been criticized for reifying, rather than reflecting, gender roles. While gender roles, according to the functionalist perspective, are beneficial in that they contribute to stable social relations, many argue that gender roles are discriminatory and should not be upheld. The feminist movement, which was on the rise at the same time that functionalism began to decline, takes the position that functionalism neglects the suppression of women within the family structure.
11.3B: The Conflict Perspective
Conflict theory suggests that men, as the dominant gender, subordinate women in order to maintain power and privilege in society.
Learning Objectives
• Describe gender from the view of the conflict perpective
Key Points
• Conflict theory asserts that social problems occur when dominant groups mistreat subordinate ones, and thus advocates for a balance of power between genders.
• Frederich Engels compared the family structure to the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, suggesting that women had less power than men in the household because they were dependent on them for wages.
• Men, like any other group with a power or wealth advantage in Conflict Theory, fought to maintain their control over resources (in this case, political and economic power). Conflict between the two groups caused things like the Women’s Suffrage Movement and was responsible for social change.
Key Terms
• subordinate: To make subservient.
• dominant: Ruling; governing; prevailing; controlling.
• proletariat: the working class or lower class
• dominant group: a sociological category that holds the majority of authority and power over other social groups
According to conflict theory, society is defined by a struggle for dominance among social groups that compete for scarce resources. In the context of gender, conflict theory argues that gender is best understood as men attempting to maintain power and privilege to the detriment of women. Therefore, men can be seen as the dominant group and women as the subordinate group. While certain gender roles may have been appropriate in a hunter-gatherer society, conflict theorists argue that the only reason these roles persist is because the dominant group naturally works to maintain their power and status. According to conflict theory, social problems are created when dominant groups exploit or oppress subordinate groups. Therefore, their approach is normative in that it prescribes changes to the power structure, advocating a balance of power between genders.
In most cultures, men have historically held most of the world’s resources. Until relatively recently, women in Western cultures could not vote or hold property, making them entirely dependent on men. Men, like any other group with a power or wealth advantage, fought to maintain their control over resources (in this case, political and economic power). Conflict between the two groups caused things like the Women’s Suffrage Movement and was responsible for social change.
Friedrich Engels, a German sociologist, studied family structure and gender roles from a Marxist perspective. Engels suggested that the same owner-worker relationship seen in the labor force could also be seen in the household, with women assuming the role of the proletariat. This was due to women’s dependence on men for the attainment of wages. Contemporary conflict theorists suggest that when women become wage earners, they gain power in the family structure and create more democratic arrangements in the home, although they may still carry the majority of the domestic burden. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.03%3A_Sociological_Perspectives_on_Gender_Stratification/11.3A%3A_The_Functionalist_Perspective.txt |
From a symbolic interactionist perspective, gender is produced and reinforced through daily interactions and the use of symbols.
Learning Objectives
• Describe gender from the view of the interactionalist perspective
Key Points
• Scholars of interactionism study how individuals act within society and believe that meaning is produced through interactions.
• According to interactionists, gender stratification exists because people act toward each other on the basis of the meanings they have for each other, and that these meanings are derived from social interaction.
• According to Cooley’s concept of the “looking-glass self,” an individual’s understanding of their gender role is based on how society perceives them. Thus, if society views a man as masculine, he will also perceive himself to be masculine.
• “Doing gender” is the notion that masculinity and feminity are performed gender identities. Gender is something we do or perform, not something we are.
Key Terms
• femininity: the sum of all attributes that convey (or are perceived to convey) womanhood
• masculinity: the degree or property of being masculine or manly; manliness
• Charles H. Cooley: an early twentieth century sociologist who developed the idea of the “looking-glass self”
Interactionism
In sociology, interactionism is a theoretical perspective that understands social processes (such as conflict, cooperation, identity formation) as emerging from human interaction. Scholars of this perspective study how individuals act within society, and believe that meaning is produced through the interactions of individuals. According to interactionists, gender stratification exists because people act toward each other on the basis of the meanings they have for one another. Interactionists believe that these meanings are derived through social interaction, and that these meanings are managed and transformed through an interpretive process that people use to make sense of, and handle, the objects that constitute their social worlds.
Goffman and Control
Social interaction is a face-to-face process that consists of actions, reactions, and mutual adaptation between two or more individuals. The goal of social interaction is to communicate with others. Social interaction includes all language, including body language and mannerisms. Erving Goffman, one of the forefathers of this theoretical perspective, emphasized the importance of control in social interactions. According to Goffman, during an interaction, individuals will attempt to control the behavior of the other participants, in order to attain needed information, and in order to control the perception of one’s own image. If the interaction is in danger of ending before an individual wants it to, it can be conserved through several steps. One conversational partner can conform to the expectations of the other, he or she can ignore certain incidents, or he or she can solve apparent problems.
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism aims to understand human behavior by analyzing the critical role of symbols in human interaction. This is certainly relevant to the discussion of masculinity and femininity, because the characteristics and practices of both are socially constructed, reproduced, and reinforced through daily interactions. Imagine, for example, that you walk into a bank, hoping to get a small loan for school, a home, or a small business venture. If you meet with a male loan officer, you might state your case logically, listing all of the hard numbers that make you a qualified applicant for the loan. This type of approach would appeal to the analytical characteristics typically associated with masculinity. If you meet with a female loan officer, on the other hand, you might make an emotional appeal, by stating your positive social intentions. This type of approach would appeal to the sensitive and relational characteristics typically associated with femininity.
Gender as Performance
The meanings attached to symbols are socially created and fluid, instead of natural and static. Because of this, we act and react to symbols based on their current assigned meanings. Both masculinity and feminity are performed gender identities, in the sense that gender is something we do or perform, not something we are . In response to this phenomena, the sociologist Charles H. Cooley’s developed the theory of the “looking-glass self” (1902). In this theory, Cooley argued that an individual’s perception of himself or herself is based primarily how society views him or her. In the context of gender, if society perceives a man as masculine, that man will consider himself as masculine. Thus, when people perform tasks or possess characteristics based on the gender role assigned to them, they are said to be doing gender (rather than “being” gender), a notion first coined by West and Zimmerman (1987). West & Zimmerman emphasized that gender is maintained through accountability. Men and women are expected to perform their gender to the point that it is naturalized, and thus, their status depends on their performance. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.03%3A_Sociological_Perspectives_on_Gender_Stratification/11.3C%3A_The_Interactionist_Perspective.txt |
Feminist theory analyzes gender stratification through the intersection of gender, race, and class.
Learning Objectives
• Explain gender stratification from the feminist perspective
Key Points
• Gender stratification occurs when gender differences give men greater privilege and power over women, transgender and gender-non-conforming people.
• Feminist theory uses the conflict approach to examine the reinforcement of gender roles and inequalities, highlighting the role of patriarchy in maintaining the oppression of women.
• Feminism focuses on the theory of patriarchy as a system of power that organizes society into a complex of relationships based on the assertion of male supremacy.
• Intersectionality suggests that various forms of oppression– such as racism, classism, and sexism — are interrelated to form a system of oppression in which various forms of discrimination intersect. The theory was first highlighted by Kimberlé Krenshaw.
• Intersectionality suggests that various biological, social, and cultural categories– including gender, race, class, and ethnicity — interact and contribute towards systematic social inequality. Therefore, various forms of oppression do not act independently but are interrelated.
• Mary Ann Weathers drew attention to the ways in which white women face a different form of discrimination than working class women of color, who additionally must fight racism and class oppression.
Key Terms
• patriarchy: The dominance of men in social or cultural systems.
• Intersectionality: The idea that various biological, social, and cultural categories– including gender, race, class, and ethnicity– interact and contribute towards systematic social inequality.
• conflict theory: A social science perspective that holds that stratification is dysfunctional and harmful in society, with inequality perpetuated because it benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor.
In sociology, social stratification occurs when differences lead to greater status, power, or privilege for some groups over others. Simply put, it is a system by which society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy. Members of society are socially stratified on many levels, including socio-economic status, race, class, ethnicity, religion, ability status, and gender. Gender stratification occurs when gender differences give men greater privilege and power over women, transgender, and gender-non-conforming people.
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality, and examines women’s social roles, experiences, and interests. While generally providing a critique of social relations, much of feminist theory also focuses on analyzing gender inequality and the promotion of women’s interests.
Feminist theory uses the conflict approach to examine the reinforcement of gender roles and inequalities. Conflict theory posits that stratification is dysfunctional and harmful in society, with inequality perpetuated because it benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor. Radical feminism, in particular, evaluates the role of the patriarchy in perpetuating male dominance. In patriarchal societies, the male’s perspective and contributions are considered more valuable, resulting in the silencing and marginalization of the woman. Feminism focuses on the theory of patriarchy as a system of power that organizes society into a complex of relationships based on the assertion of male supremacy.
The feminist perspective of gender stratification more recently takes into account intersectionality, a feminist sociological theory first highlighted by feminist-sociologist Kimberlé Crenshaw. Intersectionality suggests that various biological, social and cultural categories, including gender, race, class and ethnicity, interact and contribute towards systematic social inequality. Therefore, various forms of oppression, such as racism or sexism, do not act independently of one another; instead these forms of oppression are interrelated, forming a system of oppression that reflects the “intersection” of multiple forms of discrimination. In light of this theory, the oppression and marginalization of women is thus shaped not only by gender, but by other factors such as race and class.
Mary Ann Weathers demonstrates intersectionality in action in “An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force.” In this publication, Weathers reveals that in the twentieth century, working-class women of color embodied the notion of intersectionality. The first and second waves of the feminist movement were primarily driven by white women, who did not adequately represent the feminist movement as a whole. It was– and continues to be– important to recognize that white women faced a different form of discrimination than working class women of color, who not only had to deal with sexism, but also fought against racism and class oppression.
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Women are considered a minority group, because they do not share the same power, privileges, rights, and opportunities as men.
Learning Objectives
• Criticize the notion that sexism does not exist in the contemporary United States based on the text
Key Points
• Sexism is discrimination or prejudice based on sex. In a patriarchal society, sexism is discrimination against women specifically.
• Women’s rights encompasses the entitlements and freedoms for women and girls of all ages in many societies around the world.
• Although women have made great strides in gaining access to education and employment, to this day they continue to face significant hurdles that men generally do not confront.
Key Terms
• women’s rights: Entitlements and freedoms claimed by women and girls of all ages in many societies in the pursuit of equality with men.
• patriarchal: relating to a system run by males, rather than females
Women are not a statistical minority, as in most societies — they are roughly equal in number to men — but they do qualify as a minority group because they tend to have less power and fewer privileges than men. Underlying this unequal treatment of women is sexism, which is discrimination based on sex — in the context of a patriarchal society, discrimination against women in particular. Discrimination against women is evident in a number of different spheres of society, whether political, legal, economic, or familial. It must, however, be noted that the issue is rarely as simple as that of men versus women. Societies today are home to a variety of different classes, ethnicities, races, and nationalities, and some groups of women may enjoy a higher status and more power relative to select groups of men, depending on factors, such as what racial and ethnic groups they are associated with.
It should be noted that gender discrimination also ties in with race and class discrimination — a concept known as ” intersectionality,” first named by feminist sociologist Kimberlé Crenshaw. For example, the intersectionality of race and gender has been shown to have a visible impact on the labor market. “Sociological research clearly shows that accounting for education, experience, and skill does not fully explain significant differences in labor market outcomes. ” The three main domains on which we see the impact of intersectionality are wages, discrimination, and domestic labor. Most studies have shown that people who fall into the bottom of the social hierarchy in terms of race or gender are more likely to receive lower wages, to be subjected to stereotypes and discriminated against, or be hired for exploitive domestic positions. Through the study of the labor market and intersectionality we gain a better understanding of economic inequalities and the implications of the multidimensional impact of race and gender on social status within society.
Sexism
Sexism can refer to three subtly different beliefs or attitudes:
• The belief that one sex is superior to the other
• The belief that men and women are very different and that this should be strongly reflected in society, language, the right to have sex, and the law
• It can also refer to simple hatred of men (misandry) or women (misogyny)
There a number of examples, both historical and contemporary, of women not being granted the same rights and access as men, both historically and in the present day. For instance, U.S. and English law, until the twentieth century, subscribed to the system of coverture, where “by marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law; that is the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage. ” Not until 1875 were women in the United States legally defined as persons (Minor v Happersett, 88 U.S. 162).
In the United States, women were treated as second-class citizens and not given the right to vote until 1920, when the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provided: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. ”
Although women have made great strides in gaining access to education and employment, to this day they continue to face significant hurdles that men generally do not confront. In economics, the term ” glass ceiling ” refers to institutional barriers that prevent minorities and women from advancing beyond a certain point in the corporate world, despite their qualifications and successes. The existence of a glass ceiling indicates that women, even today, do not enjoy the same opportunities as men.
Women’s Rights
Women’s rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies. In some places, these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behavior, whereas in others, they may be ignored or suppressed. They differ from broader notions of human rights through claims of an inherent historical and traditional bias against the exercise of rights by women and girls in favor of men and boys.
Issues commonly associated with notions of women’s rights include, though are not limited to, the rights to: bodily integrity and autonomy; vote (suffrage); hold public office; work; fair wages or equal pay; own property; be educated; serve in the military or be conscripted; enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental, and religious rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, advocates “the equal rights of men and women,” and addresses issues of equality. In 1979, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for legal implementation of the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Described as an international bill of rights for women, it went into effect on September 3, 1981. The UN member states that have not ratified the convention are Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, Tonga, and the United States. Niue and the Vatican City, which are non-member states, also have not ratified it.
The Convention defines discrimination against women as follows:
Any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment, or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil, or any other field. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.04%3A_Women_as_a_Minority/11.4A%3A_Women_as_a_Minority.txt |
Patriarchy is a social structure in which men are considered to have a monopoly on power and women are expected to submit.
Learning Objectives
• Argue in favor of either a sociobiological or social constructionist explanation of patriarchy
Key Points
• There are both sociobiological and social constructionist explanations of patriarchy.
• Sociobiological explanations use human biology and genetics to explain male control, while social constructionist explanations say that individuals, male and female, actively construct gender roles.
• According to social constructionist theories, gender roles are created by individuals within a society who choose to imbue a particular structure with meaning.
Key Terms
• gender roles: Sets of social and behavioral norms that are generally considered appropriate for either a man or a woman in a social or interpersonal relationship.
• social constructionism: The idea that social institutions and knowledge are created by actors within the system, rather than having any inherent truth on their own.
• patriarchy: The dominance of men in social or cultural systems.
The origins of patriarchy are closely related to the concept of gender roles, or the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex. Much work has been devoted to understanding why women are typically thought to inhabit a domestic role while men are expected to seek professional satisfaction outside of the home. This division of labor is frequently mapped onto a social hierarchy in which males’ freedom to venture outside of the home and presumed control over women is perceived as superior and dominant. As such, rather than working to destablize the historical notion of patriarchy, much literature assess the origins of patriarchy, or a social system in which the male gender role acts as the primary authority figure central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege and entails female subordination.
Though less popular in modern academic circles, there has been a traditional search for biological explanations of gender roles. Before the nineteenth century, this conversation was primarily theological and deemed patriarchy to be the “natural order. ” This took on a biological trope with Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution in The Origin of Species. In this work, Darwin explained evolution from the biological understanding that is now the accepted scientific theory. Biologists such as Alfred Russel Wallace quickly applied his theory to mankind. To be clear, though, the line of thought called Social Darwinism, or the application of evolutionary principles to the development of human beings and our social practices, was never promoted by Darwin himself. With the popularization of the idea of human evolution, what had previously been explained as a “natural order” for the world morphed into a “biological order. ”
The modern term for using biological explanations to explain social phenomena is sociobiology. Sociobiologists use genetics to explain social life, including gender roles. According to the sociobiologists, patriarchy arises more as a result of inherent biology than social conditioning. One such contemporary sociobiologist is Steven Goldberg, who, until retirement, was a sociologist at the City College of New York. In 1973, Goldberg published The Inevitability of Patriarchy, which advanced a biological interpretation of male dominance. Goldberg argued that male dominance is a human universal as a result of our biological makeup. One evolutionary sociobiological theory for the origin of patriarchy begins with the view that females almost always invest more energy into producing offspring than males and, as a result, females are a resource over which males compete. This theory is called Bateman’s principle. One important female preference in selecting a mate is which males control more resources to assist her and her offspring. This, in turn, causes a selection pressure on men to be competitive and succeed in gaining resources in order to compete with other men.
These sociobiological theories of patriarchy are counterbalanced by social constructionist theories that emphasize how certain cultures manufacture and perpetuate gender roles. According to social constructionist theories, gender roles are created by individuals within a society who choose to imbue a particular structure with meaning. Gender roles are constantly toyed with and negotiated by actors subscribing to and questioning them. Since the feminist movement in the 1970s and the flood of women into the workforce, social constructionism has gained even greater traction.
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While women are succeeding in a number of professions, they continue to face significant barriers to entry and participation.
Learning Objectives
• Illustrate two barriers to women’s equal participation in the workforce
Key Points
• A gender role comprises a set of social and behavioral norms that are attritibuted to men and women and that are expected to be adhered to in social settings and interpersonal relationships.
• Historically, the division of labor has been organized according to gender roles and, consequently, certain types of activity are considered more appropriate for men while others are allotted to women.
• Some significant barriers to participation in the workforce women face include network discrimination and access to education, training and capital.
Key Terms
• Network Discrimination: A form of discrimination in which groups hire individuals from their same group, or network, rather than reaching outside to new networks.
• Gender Role: A set of social and behavioral norms that are generally considered appropriate for either a man or a woman in a social or interpersonal relationship.
Historically, the division of labor has been organized along gender lines. Gender roles – a set of social and behavioral norms about what is considered appropriate for either a man or woman in a social or interpersonal relationship – have affected the specialization of work in both agricultural and industrial societies.
A number of factors over the past few decades have resulted in women entering and flourishing in a variety of different professions. Despite the enormous progress women around the world have made in pursuing careers, there remain significant obstacles women confront in the workplace. The glass ceiling and occupational sexism reflect the restrictions on women as they try to enter and rise in the ranks of the workforce. While occupational sexism and the glass ceiling will be explored in the section ‘ Inequalities of work,” what follows is a discussion of barriers to equal participation in the work force, including access to education and training, access to capital, network discrimination and other factors.
How to Supervise Women (1944): A film to teach men how to supervise women in the workplace in the 1940s.
Access to Education and Training
A number of occupations became “professionalized” through the 19th and 20th centuries, gaining regulatory bodies and requiring particular higher educational requirements. As women’s access to higher education was often limited, this effectively restricted women’s participation in these professionalizing occupations. For instance, women were completely forbidden access to Cambridge University until 1868, and were encumbered with a variety of restrictions until 1987 when the university adopted an equal opportunity policy. Numerous other institutions in the United States and Western Europe began opening their doors to women over the same period of time, but access to higher education remains a significant barrier to women’s full participation in the workforce. Even where access to higher education is formally available, women’s access to the full range of occupational choices can be limited.
Access to Capital
Women’s access to occupations requiring capital outlays is also hindered by their unequal access (statistically) to capital; this affects individuals who want to pursue careers as entrepreneurs, farm owners and investors. Numerous micro-loan programs attempt to redress this imbalance, targeting women for loans or grants to establish start-up businesses or farms. For example, while research has shown that women cultivate more than half the world’s food, most of the work is family subsistence labor, with family property often legally owned by men in the family.
Network Discrimination
Part of the problem keeping women out of the highest paying, most prestigious positions is that they have historically not held these positions. As a result, recruiters for high- status jobs are predominantly white males, and tend to hire similar people in their networks. Their networks are made up of mostly white males from the same socio-economic status, which helps perpetuate their over-representation in the best jobs.
Other Social and Structural Factors
Through a process known as “employee clustering,” employees tend to be grouped both spatially and socially with those of a similar status job. Women are no exception and tend to be grouped with other women making comparable amounts of money. They compare wages with women around them and believe their salaries are fair because they are average. Some women may be unaware of just how vast the inequality is.
Furthermore, women tend to be less assertive and confrontational than men. Some have suggested that one of the factors contributing to the higher proportion of raises going to men is the simple fact that men tend to ask for raises more often than women, and are more aggressive when doing so. Women and me are socialized at young ages into these roles. School-age boys and girls have been noted as enacting the same aggressive and passive characteristics in educational settings that we see in adults in the workplace.
An additional issue that contributes to income inequality by gender is that women are much more likely than men to take “breaks” in their careers to have children (due to personal choice or as a result of circumstances). When a woman in this scenario re-enters the workforce, she may be offered a smaller salary or a lower position that she might have merited had she remained in the workforce. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.05%3A_Women_in_the_Workplace/11.5A%3A_Women_in_the_Workplace.txt |
Women are frequently treated unequally at work, often through sexual harassment and/or wage discrimination.
Learning Objectives
• Describe two typical manifestations of occupational sexism
Key Points
• Occupational sexism includes any discriminatory practices or statements based on a person’s sex.
• One typical manifestation of occupational sexism is sexual harassment –-the intimidation, bullying, teasing, or coercion of a sexual nature or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors.
• Wage discrimination, also known as the gender pay gap, is a phenomenon in which women are consistently paid less for performing the same tasks as men.
• The glass ceiling is an institutional barrier that prevents both women and minorities from advancing beyond a certain point in the workplace.
Key Terms
• gender pay gap: The gap in wages between women and men, even when women perform the same tasks as men.
• glass ceiling: An unwritten, uncodified barrier to further promotion or progression for a member of a specific demographic group.
• pink-collar worker: A worker who performs work in the service sector that is considered to be stereotypically female.
Despite flooding the workplace since the 1970s and 1980s, women still face many institutional challenges to equality in the workplace. The most obvious and publicly condemned example of inequality in the workplace is the prevalence of occupational sexism, or any discriminatory practice, statement, or action based on a person’s sex that occur in a place of employment. One typical manifestation of occupational sexism is sexual harassment–-the intimidation, bullying, teasing, or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment may be a particular offer extended to an individual (i.e., a promotion in return for sexual rewards) or the general atmosphere created within a workplace. If a workplace engenders an environment that is hostile to women, that workplace is in violation of employment law that bans sexual harassment. However, sexual harassment is not synonymous with workplace inequality. Legally, sexual harassment can be directed by one person of either gender towards another person of either gender. However, inequalities in the workplace typically refer to institutional barriers placed in the way of professional success for women.
Beyond sexual harassment, the most obvious instance of inequality in the workplace is wage discrimination. Frequently referred to as the gender pay gap, this phenomenon observes that women are consistently paid less for performing the same tasks as men. While the exact figure varies in response to a variety of factors, there is little debate that women earn less than men. Women are estimated to earn 76% of what men earn for the same work. In other words, women make 76 cents for every dollar men earn for performing the same task. Part of the pay gap can be attributed to the fact that, more often than men, women tend to engage in part-type work or work in lower-paid industries. This explanation of the pay gap invokes the notion of the pink-collar worker. A “pink-collar worker” is a term for designating the types of jobs in the service industry that are considered to be stereotypically female, such as working as a waitress, nurse, teacher, or secretary. The term attempts to distinguish this type of work from blue-collar and white-collar work. However, not even this acknowledgement explains the entirety of the wage gap, for even women working full time in higher-paid industries earn less than their male colleagues.
The larger schema into which the gender pay gap fits is the notion of a “glass ceiling” for women in the workplace. The term refers to institutional barriers for which there is little hope for legal redress and, thus, appear to be as invisible as glass but that nevertheless limit the rise of women in the workplace. Certainly, the pay gap and other economic issues play into the notion of a glass ceiling, but the term also refers to more general power dynamics. During the 2008 American presidential election, Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign was considered to contribute to helping shatter the glass ceiling for women in the United States. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.05%3A_Women_in_the_Workplace/11.5B%3A_Inequalities_of_Work.txt |
Social expectations that women manage childcare contribute to the gender pay gap and other limitations in professional life for women.
Learning Objectives
• Recall at least three reasons why there might be a gender pay gap
Key Points
• Because women are expected to handle childcare, they choose jobs with greater flexibility and lower pay.
• The gender pay gap has been attributed to differences in personal and workplace characteristics between women and men (education, hours worked, occupation etc.), as well as direct and indirect discrimination in the labor market (gender stereotypes, customer and employer bias etc.).
• Health care for children and flexible scheduling that can help women with the childcare for which they are still overwhelmingly responsible, may take priority over pay.
Key Terms
• gender pay gap: The gap in wages between women and men, even when women perform the same tasks as men.
In the United States, there is an observable gender pay gap, such that women are compensated at lower rates for equal work as men. The gender pay gap is measured as the ratio of female to male median yearly earnings among full-time, year-round (FTYR) workers. The female-to-male earnings ratio was 0.77 in 2009, meaning that, in 2009, female FTYR workers earned 77% as much as male FTYR workers. Women’s median yearly earnings relative to men’s rose rapidly from 1980 to 1990 (from 60.2% to 71.6%), and less rapidly from 1990 to 2000 (from 71.6% to 73.7%) and from 2000 to 2009 (from 73.7% to 77.0%).
This discrepancy is frequently attributed to women’s desire to have a family life. Inequalities in professional success are sometimes attributed to women taking maternity leave after having children. Further, women are accused of intentionally seeking out jobs with fewer hours and lower pay in order to be more flexible for their children. Economists who have investigated the gender pay gap have also noted that women are more likely to choose jobs based on factors other than pay. The gender pay gap has also been attributed to differences in personal and workplace characteristics between women and men (education, hours worked, occupation etc.) as well as direct and indirect discrimination in the labor market (gender stereotypes, customer and employer bias etc.).
Health care for children and a flexible schedule that enables women to take care of their children for which they are still overwhelmingly responsible, may take priority over pay. Moreover, many women are disinclined to take jobs that that require travel or are hazardous. On average, women take more time off and work fewer hours, often due to the unequal distribution of childcare and domestic labor. Family obligations tend to pull down on women’s earnings as they proceed through the life course and have more children. The earnings gap tends to widen considerably when men and women are in their early to mid-thirties, or when people start to have children, and reaches its widest point when men and women are in their fifties. The demands of women having to manage work and family lives have become an obsession of American popular culture.
11.5D: Education and Unequal Treatment in the Classroom
Women have historically been disadvantaged in education, and learning has often been segregated along gender lines.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the role of women in the classroom, both in the past and in the present
Key Points
• Disparities in education have shifted in response to various historical factors, and women are now earning more graduate degrees than men.
• Women’s colleges were established in order to educate women, and many of these colleges later merged with male universities.
• Since the early 1990s, more women have been enrolled in college than men.
Key Terms
• coordinate colleges: Women’s colleges paired with men’s colleges, creating a link between the two schools, but keeping education gender segregated.
• coeducational (coed): A college that has both male and female students.
• Seven Sisters colleges: A group of the most famous women’s colleges in the United States, including Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr, and Barnard Colleges.
Higher education has historically been regarded as a male domain. In early American history, women were sent to tutors and then to female seminaries, though training largely emphasized ladylike accomplishments, such as piano-playing, needlepoint, and literature, over serious academic education. Even as women’s education became more robust, it was considered to be distinct from men’s education. By the mid-1800s, several women’s colleges had been established, and many were coupled with men’s universities as coordinate colleges. In the 1970s and 1980s, some of these coordinate colleges were absorbed into the larger university to create coeducational (coed) universities with both men and women. The most famous women’s colleges in the United States were known as the Seven Sisters colleges and included Mount Holyoke College, Vassar College, Wellesley College, Smith College, Radcliffe College, Bryn Mawr College, and Barnard College. Today, five still operate as women’s-only colleges, Radcliffe no longer accepts students, and Vassar is coeducational.
Despite the integration of men and women in university classrooms, women continue to face gender -based disparities and biases. To this day, math and science are often thought to be, “male” fields, while subjects in the humanities are considered to be the more natural province of women. Of course, particular subjects are not inherently “male” or “female. ” However, gender norms are often informally inculcated at an early age, when elementary school teachers may encourage boys to pursue math and science and not do the same for girls. Further, boys generally receive more positive and negative attention in the classroom than do girls; as a result, the school environment can unintentionally become male-centered.
All of this, however, is changing. As has long been acknowledged, females now earn higher grades than males, and since the early 1990s, more women than men have been enrolled in college. Recently, women have also begun to outnumber men in graduate schools. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.05%3A_Women_in_the_Workplace/11.5C%3A_Family_and_Gender_Issues.txt |
Women have had to fight for equal treatment in politics in the United States by winning the right to vote and a seat at the political table.
Learning Objectives
• Infer, from the historical struggle for womens’ equal treatment in politics, why gender stereotypes and barriers to equal political participation still exist in the United States
Key Points
• The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote.
• Gender stereotypes about female politicians and voters still exist.
• Since gaining the right to vote in 1920, women have worked in many levels of government in the United States. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan named Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court justice. Currently, three of the nine sitting justices are women.
• Despite the increasing presence of women in American politics, gender stereotypes still exist. Data from the 2006 American National Election Studies Pilot Study showed that voters of both sexes, regardless of their political persuasions, expected men to perform better as politicians than women.
• Because gender is considered to be a master status, “women” are considered to be a political demographic. In other words, “women” are supposed to have certain political priorities (usually those having to do with children and education) that unite all women as a voting bloc.
Key Terms
• voting bloc: A group of voters that are strongly motivated by a specific common concern or group of concerns to the point that such specific concerns tend to dominate their voting patterns, causing them vote together in elections.
• women’s suffrage: The right of women to vote.
• master status: A social status that is the primary, socially-identifying characteristic of an individual, such as being the queen.
Political Gender Inequality
Even in democratic societies in which gender equality is legally mandated, gender discrimination occurs in politics, both in regards to presumptions about political allegiances that fall along gender lines, and disparate gender representation within representative democracies. Historically, this was even more true when women were neither considered full citizens, nor could not vote.
This section will trace the historical development of women achieving the right to vote and will then consider recent developments as women have achieved political power as representatives, in addition to being members of the voting public. Finally, we will consider assumptions made about women’s political leanings on the basis of gender.
Voting Rights for Women
Before 1920, women did not have a national right to vote in the United States. Women’s suffrage, the movement to achieve the female vote, was won gradually at state and local levels during the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, which provided:
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
To appreciate the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, one must look back to the mid-nineteenth century. The Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 was a single step in a broad and continuous effort by women to gain a greater proportion of social, civil, and moral rights for themselves; but was viewed by many as a revolutionary beginning to the struggle for women’s equality.
Women’s suffrage took a back seat to the Civil War and Reconstruction, but America’s entry into World War I re-initiated a vigorous push. When President Woodrow Wilson announced that America needed to enter the European battlefield in order to protect democracy, women were up in arms. The National Women’s Party became the first cause to picket outside of the White House, with banners comparing President Wilson to his German adversary, Kaiser Wilhelm. The Nineteenth Amendment was passed the year following the Treaty of Paris, which ended World War I.
Women in Recent Politics
Since gaining the fundamental right to vote in 1920, women have worked in many levels of government in the United States. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan named Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court justice. She was later joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and has been succeeded by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Currently, three of the nine sitting justices are women. In 1996, President Bill Clinton appointed Madeline Albright to be the first female Secretary of State, a post later given to Condoleezza Rice by President George W. Bush in 2005. Hillary Clinton is the current Secretary of State.
Women in politics took center stage in the 2008 election. In the primary season, New York Senator Hillary Clinton ran against future President Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. Although Clinton was the twenty-fifth woman to run for U.S. President, she was the first female candidate to have a significant chance of winning the nomination of a major party and the general election.
As such, remarks about her gender and appearance came to the fore. Commentators noted that because she was a woman, Clinton had a sexual power that would make her too intimidating to win the national election. Comments about Clinton’s body, cleavage, choice of pantsuit, and speculation about cosmetic surgery popped up over airwaves. Many wondered if the same fixation on a candidate’s body and style would happen to a male candidate. Commentary about the role of gender in the 2008 presidential election further snowballed when Republican presidential nominee John McCain chose female Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate.
Gender Stereotyping
Despite the increasing presence of women in American politics, gender stereotypes still exist. Data from the 2006 American National Election Studies Pilot Study confirmed that both male and female voters, regardless of their political persuasions, expected men to perform better as politicians than women. The only deviation in this data had to do with competency in areas such as education that are typically perceived as women’s domains and voters therefore trusted women politicians more.
Because gender is considered to be a master status, or a primary trait around which individuals identify, “women” are considered to be a political demographic. In other words, “women” are supposed to have certain political priorities (usually those having to do with children and education) that unite all women as a voting bloc, or a group of individuals who tend to vote in the same way.
For this reason, political strategists see the “female vote” as one to be won. As such, one will see organizations uniting the female demographic and political priorities, such as “Women for Obama” or “Women for Romney. ” | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.05%3A_Women_in_the_Workplace/11.5E%3A_Gender_Inequality_in_Politics.txt |
Despite legal protections, job discrimination against women still exists in the workplace.
Learning Objectives
• List the forms of discrimination that women may face on the job
Key Points
• Some women are subjected to sexual harassment and a gender pay gap.
• Stereotypes about the type of work that women can do are commonplace.
• Pink-collar work is a term designating the types of jobs in the service industry that are considered to be stereotypically female, such as working as a waitress, nurse, teacher or secretary.
Key Terms
• sexual harassment: intimidation, bullying, teasing, or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors.
• pink-collar worker: A worker who performs work in the service sector that is considered to be stereotypically female.
• wage discrimination: When women earn less than men for performing the same tasks.
Even though there are regulations that are used to promote equality within the workplace, occupational sexism, or any discriminatory practice, statement, or action based on a person’s sex that occurs in a place of employment, is still rampant. The most archetypical manifestation of occupational sexism is sexual harassment, or the intimidation, bullying, teasing, or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment may be a particular offer extended to an individual (i.e., a promotion in return for sexual rewards) or the generally atmosphere created within a workplace. If a workplace engenders an environment that is hostile to women, that workplace is in violation of the employment law that bans sexual harassment. However, sexual harassment is not synonymous with workplace inequality. Legally, sexual harassment can be directed by one person of either gender towards another person of either gender. Thus, sexual harassment is broader than the simple creation of a professional environment that is not welcoming to women. Women can perpetrate sexual harassment; men can be victims of sexual harassment. However, inequalities in the workplace typically refer to institutional barriers placed in the way of professional success for women.
Beyond sexual harassment, the most obvious instance of inequality in the workplace is wage discrimination. Frequently referred to as the gender pay gap, this phenomenon observes that women are consistently paid less for performing the same tasks as men. Women are estimated to earn 76% of what men earn for the same work. In other words, women make 76 cents for every dollar men earn for performing the same task.
Part of the pay gap can be attributed to the fact that, more often than men, women tend to engage in part-time work or work in lower paid industries. This explanation of the pay gap invokes the notion of the pink-collar worker. A pink-collar worker is a term for designating the types of jobs in the service industry that are considered to be stereotypically female, such as working as a waitress, nurse, teacher or secretary. The term attempts to distinguish this type of work from blue-collar and white-collar work. However, not even this acknowledgement explains the entirety of the wage gap, for even women working full-time in higher paid industries earn less than their male colleagues. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.05%3A_Women_in_the_Workplace/11.5F%3A_Job_Discrimination.txt |
Gender discrimination in health care manifests itself primarily as the difference that men and women pay for their insurance premium.
Learning Objectives
• Identify three ways in which gender inequality in health care manifests itself in the United States
Key Points
• Gender inequality in health care presents itself as women have to pay higher insurance premiums than men.
• Another form of gender inequality in health care is the different rates at which men and women are insured; more women than men are insured in the United States.
• Gender inequalities in health care also revolve around different medicines are covered by insurance companies. For example, the contraceptive mandate demonstrates gender inequities in the different medicine that insurance companies are willing to cover for male and female patients.
• Gender inequality in health care might be reduced under President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which outlaws gender discrimination in health care. It would require insurance companies to charge men and women the same rate for health insurance.
Key Terms
• contraceptive mandate: A government requirement that health plans—including those offered by religious institutions—offer contraception to policy holders.
• insurance premium: The amount charged to a policy holder for a certain amount of insurance coverage.
Assessing gender equity in the health care systems, particularly in the United States, depends heavily upon what factors one considers best to analyze equality.
The Insured
More women than men are insured in the United States. In one study of a population group in a low-income urban community, 86 percent of women reported having access to health insurance through publicly assisted or private options, while only 74 percent of men reported having any health insurance at all. Trends in which women report higher rates of health insurance coverage is not unique to urban, low-income, American populations.
Studies that address percentages of each gender covered by insurance only speak to one measure of inequality in health care.
Insurance Premiums
Gender discrimination in health care manifests primarily as the amount of money one pays for insurance premiums—the amount paid per month in order to be covered by insurance. Women statistically pay far higher premiums than men. This is largely due to regulations of private insurance companies. Fewer than ten state governments prohibit gender discrimination in insurance premiums. For the rest of the union, insurance companies consistently charge their female policy owners more than their male counterparts.
Gender discrimination in health care could be changing in the United States. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (informally called “Obamacare”), passed under President Barack Obama in 2010, insurance companies would be prohibited from charging men and women differently. To rationalize gendered rates, insurance companies claim that women use more medical services than men because of pregnancy visits.
Women’s Health
The Obama administration faced another controversy over gender equity in healthcare in 2012 with the administration’s contraceptive mandate. In January of 2012, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, announced that all health care plans were required to provide coverage for contraceptives approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The effective meaning of Secretary Sebelius’ announcement was that contraceptives are considered by the Obama administration to be a requisite component of health care.
The premise of the contraceptive mandate demonstrates present inequities in the American health care industry for male and female patients. Whereas services for male reproductive health, such as Viagra, are considered to be a standard part of health care, women’s reproductive health services are called into question. In the context of the 2012 contraceptive mandate debate, health care professionals ‘ assessments that contraception is an integral component for women’s health care, regardless of sexual activity, went largely unaddressed. Instead, insurance coverage of contraception was framed as a government subsidy for sexual activity.This framing revealed inherent social inequalities for women in the domain of sexual health.
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The definition of rape and its effects on victims have evolved historically alongside ideas about gender and sexuality.
Learning Objectives
• Describe the influence of the feminist movement on public attitudes toward rape and the notion of consent
Key Points
• Rape has serious psychological and physical consequences for the victim.
• The definitions of rape and consent are culturally and historically contingent upon the particular sexual mores of a time. Recently, the definition or rape has been expanded to include any gender, and now contains stricter definitions of consent.
• Victim blaming and self-blame are rooted in public beliefs that a victim is at least partially responsible for rape. Rape shield laws prohibit legal testimony regarding a victim’s sexual behavior, in order to prevent victims from being placed on trial along with defendants.
• International law defines rape as a crime against humanity and a potentially genocidal act.
• Rape shield laws prohibit legal testimony regarding a victim’s sexual behavior in order to prevent the victim from being placed on trial along with the defendant.
Key Terms
• victim blaming: when the victim of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment is held entirely or partially responsible for the transgressions committed against him or her (regardless of whether the victim actually had any responsibility for the incident)
• date rape: non-consensual sexual activity between a victim and perpetrator that know one another
• self-blame: when one holds oneself responsible for a negative experience
Rape is a type of sexual assault in which one or more individuals forces sexual contact on another individual without consent. Rape can cause devastating physical and psychological trauma. In the aftermath of an attack, many victims develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a severe anxiety disorder. Rape victims may also confront a number of emotions related to shame. Often, victims blame themselves for rape. Some victims come to believe they somehow deserved the assault, while others become preoccupied thinking about how the rape could have been avoided.
Although self-blame might seem like an unusual, intensely individual response to rape, it is rooted in social conceptions of rape and victimhood. In the case of rape, victim blaming generally refers to the belief that certain behaviors on the part of the victim, like flirting or wearing provocative clothing, encourage assault. Legal systems may perpetuate victim blaming. For example, in the United States, defendants are guaranteed an opportunity to explain their actions and motivations, which may allow them to instigate conversations about their victims’ sexual past or physical presentation. Lawyers and activists are aware of the negative consequences of this type of conversation in courtrooms, and many have encouraged state legislators to enact rape shield laws, which would prohibit testimony about a victim’s sexual behavior. Nevertheless, victims are often reluctant to report rape because of these social pressures.
Consent
The definition of rape rests on the notion of consent, which has changed over the course of history as sexual mores and understandings of gender have changed. For example, in medieval Europe, a woman could be legally married by her parents to a stranger without her consent and, once married, she could no longer refuse to consent to sex. The medieval concept of rape did not allow for the possibility of being raped by one’s husband. It was only in middle of the 16th century that European courts began to recognize a minimum age of consent, though this figure was typically set around six or seven years. In modern legal understanding, consent may be explicit or implied by context, but the absence of objection never itself constitutes consent, and consent can be withdrawn at any time. Consent cannot be forced and it cannot be given by certain categories of people considered incapable of consent (e.g., minors and the cognitively disabled).
Rape and Gender
Rape is often thought of as a crime committed by a man against a woman, but increasingly, social and legal definitions of rape recognize that this does not have to be the case. In 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation updated its definition of rape, which had originally been instituted in 1972, and which previously limited rape to a crime against women. This definition, considered outdated and overly narrow, was replaced by a new definition, which recognizes that rape can be perpetrated by a person of any gender against a victim of any gender. The new definition also broadens the instances in which a victim is unable to give consent. These instances now include temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity, and incapacity caused by the use of drugs or alcohol.
The FBI’s new definition continues a trend that gained traction with the feminist movement of the 1970s, when rape was publicly characterized as a crime of power and control rather than a sexual act. Leaders of the feminist movement started some of the first rape crisis centers, which not only provided basic services to victims, but also advanced the idea of rape as a criminal act with a victim who was not to be blamed. Feminist leaders also encouraged the codification of marital rape, or forced sexual contact between spouses. Currently, the struggle continues with efforts to bring attention to date rape, which is embedded in the gendered expectation that women engage in sexual activity following a date with a man. Conversations about date rape work to undo this social expectation and to reinforce the idea that consensual sex requires the explicit permission of both partners.
International Law
International law is changing to recognize rape as a weapon of war. The Rome Statute included rape in its definition of a crime against humanity, a definition first put into practice in the mid-1990s by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. This judicial body recognized that Serbian soldiers and policemen had systematically raped Muslim women during the Balkan War. In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found that systematic rape was a crime against humanity. It also ruled that rape was an aspect of genocide, because of the use of rape to impregnate women in order to weaken or eliminate a particular gene pool. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.06%3A_Gender-Based_Violence/11.6A%3A_Rape.txt |
Sexual violence is any sexual act or sexual advance directed at one individual without their consent.
Learning Objectives
• Explain why sexual violence is difficult to track
Key Points
• An act is deemed sexually violent if the individual to whom the attention is directed does not consent to the sexual activity, if they are members of a class of persons who cannot consent (the severely cognitively impaired, etc.), or if consent is due to coercion or duress.
• Sexual violence has a profound impact on physical and mental health.
• Sexual violence is particularly difficult to track because it is severely under reported.
Key Terms
• sexual assault: A physical attack of a sexual nature on another person or a sexual act committed without explicit consent.
• coercion: Actual or threatened force for the purpose of compelling action by another person; the act of coercing.
• sexual violence: Any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.
Sexual violence is any sexual act or sexual advance directed at one individual without their consent. The most commonly discussed form of sexual violence is rape. Rape is a form of sexual assault involving one or more persons who force sexual penetration with another individual without that individual’s consent. Sexual violence is not limited to rape; it is a broad category that can include everything from verbal harassment to physical assault.
Forms of sexual violence include: rape by strangers, marital rape, date rape, war rape, unwanted sexual harassment, demanding sexual favors, sexual abuse of children, sexual abuse of disabled individuals, forced marriage, child marriage, denial of the right to use contraception, denial of the right to take measures to protect against sexually-transmitted diseases, forced abortion, genital mutilation, forced circumcision, and forced prostitution.
An act is deemed sexually violent if the individual to whom the attention is directed does not consent to the sexual activity, if they are members of a class of persons who cannot consent (the severely cognitively impaired, individuals who are inebriated, minors, etc.), or if consent is due to coercion or duress. Coercion can cover a whole spectrum of degrees of force. Apart from physical force, it may involve psychological intimidation, blackmail, or any other type of threat, like the threat of physical harm or of being dismissed from a job.
Sexual violence has a profound impact on physical and mental health. Sexual violence can cause severe physical injuries, including an increased risk of sexual and reproductive health problems, with both immediate and long-term consequences. Additionally, sexual violence can impact mental health, which can be as serious as its physical impact, and may be even longer lasting.
Acts of Power
Sexually violent acts are acts of power, not of sex. This can be seen most clearly when considering war rape and prison rape. War rape is the type of sexual pillaging that occurs in the aftermath of a war, typically characterized by the male soldiers of the victorious military raping the women of the towns they have just taken over. Prison rape is the type of rape that is common (and seriously under reported) in prisons all over the world, including the United States, in which inmates will force sex upon one another as a demonstration of power.
Tracking Sexual Violence
Sexual violence is particularly difficult to track because it is severely under reported. Records from police and government agencies are often incomplete or limited. Most victims of sexual violence do not report it because they are ashamed, afraid of being blamed, concerned about not being believed, or are simply afraid to relive the event by reporting it. Most countries and many NGOs are undertaking efforts to try to increase the reporting of sexual violence as it so obviously has serious physical and psychological impacts on its victims.
On a global scale, international sexual violence is difficult to track because of extreme variation in sexual mores. A good example of cultural variation with regards to sexual violence is the differing views associated with the practice of female circumcision/female genital mutilation (FGM). Female circumcision and FGM refer to the same practice, but the practice is called “female circumcision” by those who condone its usage. FGM has violent connotations and is used by individuals who conceive of the practice as a violation of human rights.
Female circumcision/FGM is a practice used in many parts of Africa in which parts of the female’s vagina, usually the clitoris, are removed in order to decrease sexual pleasure. The operation is performed most commonly on young females. The practice has been the target of many human rights campaigns as a serious affront to the fundamental human rights of the girls undergoing the operation. However, many individuals in Africa view the practice as an acceptable component of their cultures. Neither vantage point is simple; some women in Africa accept the practice, while others have been vocal in speaking out against the practice. Nevertheless, the case demonstrates that cultural norms associated with sex / sex organs (and therefore sexual violence) can vary widely across cultures. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/11%3A_Gender_Stratification_and_Inequality/11.06%3A_Gender-Based_Violence/11.6B%3A_Sexual_Violence.txt |
Sexual harassment is intimidation, bullying, teasing, or coercion of a sexual nature.
Learning Objectives
• Explain when and how sexual harassment is prosecuted in the U.S.
Key Points
• Sexual harassment is common in the workplace.
• Sexual harassment happens any time intimidation, bullying, teasing, or coercion of a sexual nature occurs.
• Sexual harassment is rarely formally charged in a legal context and individuals who do make such charges official are frequently ridiculed.
Key Terms
• sexual harassment: intimidation, bullying, teasing, or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors.
Sexual harassment is intimidation, bullying, teasing, or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In most legal contexts this type of behavior is criminalized. The person intimidating a victim about his or her sexuality could be male or female; men and women can both be perpetrators of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment does not have to be only of a sexual nature; indeed, sexual harassment includes unwelcome and offensive comments about a person’s gender. Regardless of whether the content of the sexual harassment is about sex or gender, both victim and harasser can be either male or female and the victim and the harasser can be the same gender.
Though broad, the legal definition of sexual harassment does not include every injurious statement pertaining to sex or gender. The law does not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious. Sexual harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in adverse employment, such as the victim being fired or demoted. Rather than being a component of criminal law, sexual harassment is typically adjudicated as an issue of employment law. As one might guess, most of these cases turn on whether or not the offensive comment was “serious” or “offhand. ” It is the law’s job to decide if a comment that the victim clearly found serious and offhand is considered so legally.
Even though sexual harassment is less violent than other forms of sexual violence such as rape, victims still suffer serious consequences. Victimhood for individuals subjected to sexual harassment can take a different and equally complicated form as victimhood for individuals who suffer from attacks for physical violence. Sexual violence that is expressed in terms of some sort of physical assault against a victim has become a condemnable act; victims of physical violence are more likely to find others who are sympathetic to their understandable distress. However, sexual harassment is more socially acceptable. Victims will often encounter opposition who claim that the harassment was mere teasing. As such, victimhood in response to sexual harassment has some unique properties. Nevertheless, sexual harassment may lead to temporary or prolonged anxiety, depending on the nature of the harassment and the type of support system in place. Given that harassment is a common problem in the workplace, anxiety on the victim’s part is usually tied into concerns about ramifications for one’s career if one reports the harassment.
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• History of rape. Provided by: Wikipedia. Located at: en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rape. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Effects and aftermath of rape. Provided by: Wikipedia. Located at: en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_and_aftermath_of_rape. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Rape. Provided by: Wikipedia. Located at: en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Consent. Provided by: Wikipedia. Located at: en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• PTSD. Provided by: Wikipedia. Located at: en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/PTSD. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
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• coercion. Provided by: Wiktionary. Located at: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coercion. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
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In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence.
Learning Objectives
• Differentiate between conjugal family and consanguineal family
Key Points
• As a unit of socialization, the family is an object of analysis for sociologists, and is considered to be the agency of primary socialization.
• A conjugal family includes only the husband, wife, and unmarried children who are not of age. This is also referred to as a nuclear family.
• Consanguinity is defined as the property of belonging to the same kinship as another person.
• A matrilocal family consists of a mother and her children, independent of a father. This occurs in cases when the mother has the resources to independently rear children, or in societies where males are mobile and rarely at home.
• The model of the family triangle, husband-wife-children isolated from the outside, is also called the Oedipal model of the family and it is a form of patriarchal family.
• A matrilocal family consists of a mother and her children.
• The model, common in the western societies, of the family triangle, husband-wife-children isolated from the outside, is also called the Oedipal model of the family and it is a form of patriarchal family.
Key Terms
• matrilocal: living with the family of the wife; uxorilocal
• A conjugal family: a family unit consisting of a father, mother, and unmarried children who are not adults
• consanguinity: a consanguineous or family relationship through parentage or descent; a blood relationship
Families
In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies, it is the principal institution for the socialization of children. Occasionally, there emerge new concepts of family that break with traditional conceptions of family, or those that are transplanted via migration, but these beliefs do not always persist in new cultural space. As a unit of socialization, the family is the object of analysis for certain scholars. For sociologists, the family is considered to be the agency of primary socialization and is called the first focal socialization agency. The values learned during childhood are considered to be the most important a human child will learn during its development.
Conjugal and Consanguineal Families
A “conjugal” family includes only a husband, a wife, and unmarried children who are not of age. In sociological literature, the most common form of this family is often referred to as a nuclear family. In contrast, a “consanguineal” family consists of a parent, his or her children, and other relatives. Consanguinity is defined as the property of belonging to the same kinship as another person. In that respect, consanguinity is the quality of being descended from the same ancestor as another person.
Other Types of Families
A “matrilocal” family consists of a mother and her children. Generally, these children are her biological offspring, although adoption is practiced in nearly every society. This kind of family is common where women independently have the resources to rear children by themselves, or where men are more mobile than women.
Common in the western societies, the model of the family triangle, where the husband, wife, and children are isolated from the outside, is also called the oedipal model of the family. This family arrangement is considered patriarchal.
12.1B: The Functions of a Family
The primary function of the family is to perpetuate society, both biologically through procreation, and socially through socialization.
Learning Objectives
• Describe the different functions of family in society
Key Points
• From the perspective of children, the family is a family of orientation: the family functions to locate children socially.
• From the point of view of the parents, the family is a family of procreation: the family functions to produce and socialize children.
• Marriage fulfills many other functions: It can establish the legal father of a woman’s child; establish joint property for the benefit of children; or establish a relationship between the families of the husband and wife. These are only some examples; the family’s function varies by society.
Key Terms
• family: A group of people related by blood, marriage, law or custom.
• Sexual division of labor: The delegation of different tasks between males and females.
The primary function of the family is to ensure the continuation of society, both biologically through procreation, and socially through socialization. Given these functions, the nature of one’s role in the family changes over time. From the perspective of children, the family instills a sense of orientation: The family functions to locate children socially, and plays a major role in their socialization. From the point of view of the parents, the family’s primary purpose is procreation: The family functions to produce and socialize children. In some cultures marriage imposes upon women the obligation to bear children. In northern Ghana, for example, payment of bride wealth signifies a woman’s requirement to bear children, and women using birth control face substantial threats of physical abuse and reprisals.
Other Functions of the Family
Producing offspring is not the only function of the family. Marriage sometimes establishes the legal father of a woman’s child or the legal mother of a man’s child; it oftentimes gives the husband or his family control over the wife’s sexual services, labor, and property. Marriage, likewise, often gives the wife or her family control over the husband’s sexual services, labor, and property. Marriage also establishes a joint fund of property for the benefit of children and can establish a relationship between the families of the husband and wife. None of these functions are universal, but depend on the society in which the marriage takes place and endures. In societies with a sexual division of labor, marriage, and the resulting relationship between a husband and wife, is necessary for the formation of an economically productive household. In modern societies marriage entails particular rights and privilege that encourage the formation of new families even when there is no intention of having children. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.01%3A_Family/12.1A%3A_The_Nature_of_a_Family.txt |
The traditional family structure consists of two married individuals providing care for their offspring, but this is becoming more uncommon.
Learning Objectives
• Analyze the statistical data regarding types of family composition and living arrangements
Key Points
• The nuclear family is considered the ” traditional ” family. The nuclear family consists of a mother, father, and their biological children.
• A single parent is a parent who cares for one or more children without the assistance of the other biological parent.
• Step families are becoming more familiar in America. Divorce rates, along with the remarriage rate are rising, therefore bringing two families together as step families.
• The extended family consists of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Key Terms
• nuclear family: a family unit consisting of at most a father, mother and dependent children.
• Family Structure: a family support system involving two married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring.
• extended family: A family consisting of parents and children, along with either grandparents, grandchildren, aunts or uncles, cousins etc.
The traditional family structure in the United States is considered a family support system which involves two married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring. However, this two-parent, nuclear family has become less prevalent, and alternative family forms have become more common. The family is created at birth and establishes ties across generations. Those generations, the extended family of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, can all hold significant emotional and economic roles for the nuclear family.
Nuclear Family
The nuclear family is considered the “traditional” family and consists of a mother, father, and the children. The two-parent nuclear family has become less prevalent, and alternative family forms such as, homosexual relationships, single-parent households, and adopting individuals are more common. The nuclear family is also choosing to have fewer children than in the past. The percentage of married-couple households with children under 18 has declined to 23.5% of all households in 2000 from 25.6% in 1990, and from 45% in 1960. However, 64 percent of children still reside in a two-parent, household as of 2012.
Single Parent
A single parent is a parent who cares for one or more children without the assistance of the other biological parent. Historically, single-parent families often resulted from death of a spouse, for instance during childbirth. Single-parent homes are increasing as married couples divorce, or as unmarried couples have children. Although widely believed to be detrimental to the mental and physical well-being of a child, this type of household is tolerated. The percentage of single-parent households has doubled in the last three decades, but that percentage tripled between 1900 and 1950. In fact, 24 percent of children live with just their mother, and 4 percent live with just their father. The sense of marriage as a “permanent” institution has been weakened, allowing individuals to consider leaving marriages more readily than they may have in the past. Increasingly single parent families are a result of out of wedlock births, especially those due to unintended pregnancy.
Step Families
Step families are becoming more common in America. Divorce rates, along with the remarriage rate are rising, therefore bringing two families together as step families. Statistics show that there are 1,300 new step families forming every day. Over half of American families are remarried, that is 75% of marriages ending in divorce, remarry.
Extended Family
The extended family consists of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. In some circumstances, the extended family comes to live either with or in place of a member of the nuclear family. About 4 percent of children live with a relative other than a parent. For example, when elderly parents move in with their children due to old age, this places large demands on the caregivers, particularly the female relatives who choose to perform these duties for their extended family. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.01%3A_Family/12.1C%3A_Family_Structures.txt |
Kinship refers to the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of most humans in most societies.
Learning Objectives
• Explain how the concept of kinship is used in anthropolgy
Key Points
• In biology, kinship typically refers to the degree of genetic relatedness or coefficient of relationships between individual members of a species.
• One of the founders of the anthropological relationship research was Lewis Henry Morgan, in his Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871). The most lasting of Morgan’s contributions was his discovery of the difference between descriptive and classificatory kinship.
• Ideas about kinship in sociology and anthropology do not necessarily assume any biological relationship between individuals, rather just close associations.
• A unilineal society is one in which the descent of an individual is reckoned either from the mother’s or the father’s line of descent.
• With matrilineal descent individuals belong to their mother’s descent group. Similarly, with patrilineal descent, individuals belong to their father’s descent group.
• The Western model of a nuclear family consists of a couple and its children.
• With patrilineal descent, individuals belong to their father’s descent group.
• The Western model of a nuclear family consists of a couple and its children.
Key Terms
• affinity: A natural attraction or feeling of kinship to a person or thing.
• descent: Lineage or hereditary derivation.
• kinship: relation or connection by blood, marriage, or adoption
Kinship is a term with various meanings depending upon the context. In anthropology, kinship refers to the web of social relationships that form an important part of human lives. In other disciplines, kinship may have a different meaning. In biology, it typically refers to the degree of genetic relatedness or coefficient of relationships between individual members of a species. In a more general sense, kinship may refer to a similarity or affinity between entities on the basis of some or all of their characteristics.
System of Kinship
One of the founders of anthropological relationship research was Lewis Henry Morgan, who wrote Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871). Members of a society may use kinship terms without being biologically related, a fact already evident in Morgan’s use of the term “affinity” within his concept of the “system of kinship. ” The most lasting of Morgan’s contributions was his discovery of the difference between descriptive and classificatory kinship, which situates broad kinship classes on the basis of imputing abstract social patterns of relationships having little or no overall relation to genetic closeness.
Kinship systems as defined in anthropological texts and ethnographies were seen as constituted by patterns of behavior and attitudes in relation to the differences in terminology for referring to relationships as well as for addressing others. Many anthropologists went so far as to see, in these patterns of kinship, strong relations between kinship categories and patterns of marriage, including forms of marriage, restrictions on marriage, and cultural concepts of the boundaries of incest.
Biological Relationships
Ideas about kinship do not necessarily assume any biological relationship between individuals, rather just close associations. Malinowski, in his ethnographic study of sexual behavior on the Trobriand Islands, noted that the Trobrianders did not believe pregnancy to be the result of sexual intercourse between the man and the woman, and they denied that there was any physiological relationship between father and child. Nevertheless, while paternity was unknown in the “full biological sense,” for a woman to have a child without having a husband was considered socially undesirable. Fatherhood was therefore recognized as a social role; the woman’s husband is the “man whose role and duty it is to take the child in his arms and to help her in nursing and bringing it up”; “Thus, though the natives are ignorant of any physiological need for a male in the constitution of the family, they regard him as indispensable socially. ”
Descent and the Family
Descent, like family systems, is one of the major concepts of anthropology. Cultures worldwide possess a wide range of systems of tracing kinship and descent. Anthropologists break these down into simple concepts about what is thought to be common among many different cultures. A descent group is a social group whose members have common ancestry. An unilineal society is one in which the descent of an individual is reckoned either from the mother’s or the father’s line of descent. With matrilineal descent, individuals belong to their mother’s descent group. Matrilineal descent includes the mother’s brother, who in some societies may pass along inheritance to the sister’s children or succession to a sister’s son. With patrilineal descent, individuals belong to their father’s descent group. Societies with the Iroquois kinship system are typically uniliineal, while the Iroquois proper are specifically matrilineal. The Western model of a nuclear family consists of a couple and its children. The nuclear family is ego-centered and impermanent, while descent groups are permanent and reckoned according to a single ancestor. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.01%3A_Family/12.1D%3A_Kinship_Patterns.txt |
The three main parenting styles in early child development are authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive.
Learning Objectives
• Describe the four different styles of parenting
Key Points
• Parenting is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child, from infancy to adulthood.
• Authoritarian parenting styles can be very rigid and strict.
• Authoritative parenting relies on positive reinforcement and infrequent use of punishment.
• Permissive parenting is a parenting style in which a child’s freedom and their autonomy are valued and parents tend to rely mostly on reasoning and explanation.
• An uninvolved parenting style is when parents are often emotionally absent and sometimes even physically absent.
Key Terms
• Uninvolved Parenting: The parenting style used when parents are often emotionally absent and sometimes even physically absent.
• Authoritarian parenting: Parenting that relies on a rigid set of rules.
• Authoritative parenting: Parenting that relies on positive reinforcement and infrequent use of punishment. Parents are more aware of a child’s feelings and capabilities, and support the development of a child’s autonomy within reasonable limits.
Parenting is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Parenting refers to the aspects of raising a child, aside from the biological relationship. Parenting is usually done by the biological parents of the child in question, although governments and society take a role as well. In many cases, orphaned or abandoned children receive parental care from non-parent blood relations. Others may be adopted, raised in foster care, or placed in an orphanage.
Parenting Styles
Developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind identified three main parenting styles in early child development: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. These parenting styles were later expanded to four, including an uninvolved style. These four styles of parenting involve combinations of acceptance and responsiveness on the one hand, and demand and control on the other. Authoritarian parenting styles can be very rigid and strict. Parents who practice authoritarian style parenting have a strict set of rules and expectations and require rigid obedience. If rules are not followed, punishment is most often used to ensure obedience. There is usually no explanation of punishment except that the child is in trouble and should listen accordingly. Authoritative parenting relies on positive reinforcement and infrequent use of punishment. Parents are more aware of a child’s feelings and capabilities and support the development of a child’s autonomy within reasonable limits. There is a give-and-take atmosphere involved in parent-child communication, and both control and support are exercised in authoritative style parenting.
Permissive parenting is most popular in middle class families. In these family settings a child’s freedom and their autonomy are valued and parents tend to rely mostly on reasoning and explanation. There tends to be little, if any, punishment or rules in this style of parenting and children are said to be free from external constraints.
An uninvolved parenting style is when parents are often emotionally absent and sometimes even physically absent. They have little to no expectation of the child and regularly have no communication. They are not responsive to a child’s needs and do not demand anything of them in terms of behavioral expectations. They provide everything the child needs for survival with little to no engagement.
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Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people called spouses that creates kinship.
Learning Objectives
• Analyze different types of marriage and the similarities and differences between polygamy and polyandry
Key Points
• The reasons people marry vary widely and include, to publicly and formally declare their love, to form a single household unit, social and economic stability, and for the education and nurturing of children.
• Same- sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or gender identity.
• A civil union, also referred to as a civil partnership, is a legally recognized form of partnership similar to marriage.
• Group marriage is a form of polyamory in which more than two persons form a family unit. All the members of the group marriage are considered to be married to all the other members of the group marriage.
• Cohabitation is an arrangement where two people who are not married live together in an intimate relationship, particularly an emotionally and sexually intimate one, on a long-term or permanent basis.
Key Terms
• group marriage: a form of polygamous marriage in which more than one man and more than one woman form a family unit
• cohabitation: An emotionally and physically intimate relationship that includes a common living place and which exists without legal or religious sanction.
• civil union: a legal union similar to marriage, established to allow similar rights to same-sex couples, and in some jurisdictions opposite-sex couples, as partners in traditional marriages have.
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between spouses that creates kinship. The most frequently occurring form of marriage is between a woman and a man, where the feminine term ‘wife’ and the masculine term ‘husband’ are generally used to describe the parties of the contract. Other forms of marriage also exist, however. For example polygamy, in which a person takes more than one spouse, exists in many societies. Currently, the legal concept of marriage is expanding to include same-sex marriage in some areas as well.
Wedding Ceremony
The reasons people marry vary widely, but usually include the desire to publicly and formally declare their love, to form a single household unit, to legitimize sexual relations and procreation, for social and economic stability, and for the education and nurturing of children. A marriage can be declared by a wedding ceremony, which may be performed either by a religious officiator or through a similar government-sanctioned secular process. The act of marriage creates obligations between the individuals involved, and, in some societies, between the parties’ extended families.
Types of Marriage
Outside of the traditional marriage between monogamous heterosexual couples, other forms of marriage exist. Same-sex is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or gender identity. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality. It is believed that same-sex unions were celebrated in Ancient Greece and Rome, some regions of China, such as Fujian, and at certain times in ancient European history. In the United States, although same-sex marriages are not recognized federally, same-sex couples can legally marry in six states (Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont) and the District of Columbia and receive state-level benefits.
A civil union, also referred to as a civil partnership, is a legally recognized form of partnership similar to marriage. Group marriage is a form of polyamory in which more than two persons form a family unit. All the members of the group marriage are considered to be married to all the other members of the group marriage. All members of the marriage share parental responsibility for any children arising from the marriage. In some jurisdictions, such as Brazil, New Zealand, Uruguay, France and the U.S. states of Hawaii and Illinois, civil unions are also open to opposite-sex couples.
Polygamy and polyandry are two less recognized (or supported) forms of marriage. In polygamy, a man usually takes on a number of different wives, although the literal translation of the term means marriage “between two or more partners”. Polyandry is specific to a woman taking on two or more husbands at a time, although it can more loosely mean having multiple sexual partners.
Cohabitation
Marriage is an institution which can join together people’s lives in a variety of emotional and economic ways. In many Western cultures, marriage usually leads to the formation of a new household comprising the married couple, with the married couple living together in the same home, often sharing the same bed, but in some other cultures this is not the tradition. Conversely, marriage is not a prerequisite for cohabitation. Cohabitation is an arrangement where two people who are not married live together in an intimate relationship, particularly an emotionally and sexually intimate one, on a long-term or permanent basis. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.02%3A_Marriage/12.2A%3A_The_Nature_of_Marriage.txt |
Romance is the expressive and pleasurable feeling from an emotional attraction to another person, and is associated with love.
Learning Objectives
• Describe the origins of the conception of romantic love
Key Points
• In the context of romantic love relationships, romance usually implies an expression of one’s strong romantic love, or one’s deep and strong emotional desires to connect with another person intimately.
• The conception of romantic love was popularized in Western culture by the concept of courtly love.
• Courtship is the period in a couple’s relationship which precedes their engagement and marriage, or establishment of an agreed relationship of a more enduring kind.
• Romantic love may also be classified according to two categories, “popular romance” and ” divine or spiritual” romance.
• The “tragic” contradiction between romance and social expectations is forcibly portrayed in art.
Key Terms
• courtship: The act of wooing in love; solicitation of individuals to marriage
• courtly love: A mediaeval European conception of noble and chivalrous love, generally secret and between members of the nobility.
• intimacy: Feeling or atmosphere of closeness and openness towards someone else, not necessarily involving sexuality.
Romance is the expressive and pleasurable feeling from an emotional attraction to another person associated with love. In the context of romantic love relationships, romance usually implies an expression of one’s strong romantic love, or one’s deep and strong emotional desires to connect with another person intimately.
During the initial stages of a romantic relationship, there is more often more emphasis on emotions—especially those of love, intimacy, compassion, appreciation, and affinity—rather than physical intimacy. Within an established relationship, romantic love can be defined as a freeing or optimizing of intimacy in a particularly luxurious manner, or perhaps in greater spirituality, irony, or peril to the relationship. In culture, arranged marriages and betrothals are customs that may conflict with romance due to the nature of the arrangement. It is possible, however, that strong romance and love can exist between the partners in an arranged marriage.
Romantic Practices
The conception of romantic love was popularized in Western culture by the concept of courtly love. Chevaliers, or knights in the Middle Ages, engaged in what were usually non-physical and non-marital relationships with women of nobility of whom they served. These relations were highly elaborate and ritualized in a complexity that was steeped in a framework of tradition, which stemmed from theories of etiquette derived out of chivalry as a moral code of conduct. Currently, courtship is the period in a couple’s relationship which precedes their engagement and marriage, or establishment of an agreed relationship of a more enduring kind. In courtship, a couple gets to know each other and decides if there will be an engagement or other such agreement. A courtship may be an informal and private matter between two people, or it may be a public affair or formal arrangement with family approval.
Types of Romantic Love
Romantic love is contrasted with platonic love which in all usages precludes sexual relations, yet only in the modern usage does it take on a fully asexual sense, rather than the classical sense in which sexual drives are sublimated. Unrequited love can be romantic in different ways: comic, tragic, or in the sense that sublimation itself is comparable to romance, where the spirituality of both art and egalitarian ideals is combined with strong character and emotions. Unrequited love is typical of the period of romanticism, but the term is distinct from any romance that might arise within it.
Romantic love may also be classified according to two categories: “popular romance” and “divine or spiritual” romance. Popular romance may include but is not limited to the following types: idealistic, normal intense, predictable as well as unpredictable, consuming, intense but out of control, material and commercial, physical and sexual, and finally grand and demonstrative. Divine romance may include, but is not limited to these following types: realistic, as well as plausible unrealistic, optimistic as well as abiding.
Tragedy and Other Social Issues
The “tragic” contradiction between romance and society is most forcibly portrayed in literature, in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The female protagonists in such stories are driven to suicide as if dying for a cause of freedom from various oppressions of marriage. Reciprocity of the sexes appears in the ancient world primarily in myth where it is in fact often the subject of tragedy, for example in the myths of Theseus and Atalanta. Noteworthy female freedom or power was an exception rather than the rule, though this is a matter of speculation and debate. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.02%3A_Marriage/12.2B%3A_Romantic_Love.txt |
Marriage is an institution which can join together people’s lives in a variety of emotional and economic ways.
Learning Objectives
• Describe cohabitation trends in the U.S.
Key Points
• Cohabitation is an arrangement where two people who are not married live together in an physically and emotionally intimate relationship on a long-term or permanent basis.
• Over the years, evidence indicating cohabiting increases the likelihood of split has always been more prevalent than evidence that suggests it is helpful.
• Cohabitation in the United States became common in the late 20th century.
• Some places, including the state of California, have laws that recognize cohabiting couples as ” domestic partners “.
Key Terms
• cohabitation: An emotionally and physically intimate relationship that includes a common living place and which exists without legal or religious sanction.
• Domestic Partners: Two individuals who live together and share a common domestic life but are neither joined by marriage nor a civil union, yet may have other legal guarantees.
• Likelihood of Split: The probability that a romantic union will dissolve.
Marriage is an institution which can join together people’s lives in a variety of emotional and economic ways. In many Western cultures, marriage usually leads to the married couple living together in the same home, often sharing the same bed. In some other cultures, this is not the tradition.
Conversely, marriage is not a prerequisite for cohabitation. Cohabitation is an arrangement where two people who are not married live together in an physically and emotionally intimate relationship on a long-term or permanent basis.
Conflicting studies on the effect of cohabitation on marriage have been published. But over the years, evidence indicating cohabiting increases the likelihood of split has always been more prevalent than evidence that suggests it is helpful. For married couples, the percentage of the relationship ending after five years is 20%, for cohabitators the percentage is 49%. The percentage of the relationship ending after 10 years is 33% for married couples and 62% for cohabitators.
The parenting role of cohabiting partners could also have a negative effect on the child. The partner that is not the parent, usually the father, does not have “explicit legal, financial, supervisory or custodial rights or responsibilities regarding the children of his partner” according to Waite. This can cause an unstable living arrangement for a child in which he or she acts out because the partner is “not their real parent. ”
Cohabitation in the United States became common in the late 20th century. Although it is illegal in five states, a total of 4.85 million couples live together. A scientific survey of over 1,000 married men and women in the United States found that those who moved in with a lover before engagement or marriage reported significantly lower quality marriages and a greater possibility for splitting up than other couples. About 20% of those who cohabited before getting engaged had since suggested divorce, as compared with only 12% of those who only moved in together after getting engaged and 10% who did not cohabit prior to the marriage.
Some places, including the state of California, have laws that recognize cohabiting couples as domestic partners. In California, such couples are defined as people who “have chosen to share one another’s lives in an intimate and committed relationship of mutual caring,” including having a “common residence, and are the same sex or persons of opposite sex if one or both of the persons are over the age of 62. ” | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.02%3A_Marriage/12.2C%3A_Marital_Residence.txt |
There is wide cross-cultural variation in the social rules governing the selection of a partner for marriage.
Learning Objectives
• Differentiate between arranged marriages and forced marriages
Key Points
• An arranged marriage is an agreement in which both parties consent to the assistance of their parents or a third party.
• Endogamy refers to the rule that a marital partner must be selected from an individual’s own social group. This is common in caste-based societies.
• Exogamy refers to the rule that a marital partner must be chosen from a different group than one’s own. This is common in totemic societies.
• In other cultures, a partner can be chosen through courtship. Marriage can also be arranged by the couple’s parents through an outside party, a matchmaker.
• Forced marriage is a term used to describe a marriage in which one or both of the parties is married without consent.
• In some societies ranging from Central Asia to the Caucasus to Africa, the custom of bride kidnapping still exists, in which a woman is captured by a man and his friends.
• In some societies ranging from Central Asia to the Caucasus to Africa, the custom of bride kidnapping still exists, in which a woman is captured by a man and his friends.
Key Terms
• matchmaker: someone who finds suitable marriage partners
• courtship: The act of wooing in love; solicitation of individuals to marriage
• shotgun wedding: This refers to a forced wedding that occurs because a bride is already pregnant.
There is wide cross-cultural variation in the social rules that govern the selection of marriage partners. In some communities, partner selection is an individual decision, while in others, it is a collective decision made by the partners’ kin groups. Among different cultures, there is also variation in the rules regulating whom individuals can choose to marry.
Arranged Marriages
An arranged marriage is an agreement in which both parties consent to the assistance of their parents or a third party. Arranged marriage has deep roots in the behavior of royal and aristocratic families around the world. Today, arranged marriage is largely practiced in South Asia (India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka), Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. To some extent, it also occurs in parts of East Asia.
In many societies, the choice of partner is limited to suitable persons from specific social groups. In some of these societies, individuals are only allowed to select partners from the individual’s social group. This is a practice called endogamy, and is common in many class and casted-based societies, like India. In other societies, on the other hand, partners can be selected from a different social group than one’s own. This is called exogamy, and is common in societies that practice totemic religion, in which society is divided into a number of distinct, exogamous, totemic clans.
In cultures with fewer rules governing mate selection, the process of finding a partner might include courtship. It might also be arranged by an individual’s parent through an outside party, called a matchmaker.
Forced Marriages
Forced marriage is a term used to describe a marriage in which one or both parties is married without consent, against his or her will. In a shotgun wedding, a marriage between two people is forced because of an unplanned pregnancy. Some cultures and religions consider it a moral imperative to marry in such a situation. This is based on the reasoning that premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock births, are sinful, and should be outlawed or stigmatized. As the stigma associated with out-of-wedlock births has faded over the years, and the number of such births has increased, shotgun weddings have become less common. They have also become less common because of the increasing availability of birth control, abortions, and welfare support for unwed mothers. Fewer people perceive shotgun weddings to be necessary in order to support the woman and the child.
In some societies, ranging from Central Asia to Africa, the custom of bride kidnapping still exists, in which a woman is captured by a man and his friends. This practice occasionally exists to conceal an elopement, but it also occasionally represents sexual violence. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.02%3A_Marriage/12.2D%3A_Mate_Selection.txt |
Child rearing is the process of supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child.
Learning Objectives
• Apply Baumrind’s parenting style categories to families in your own environment.
Key Points
• Parenting is usually done by the biological parents of the child in question, although governments and society play roles as well.
• Authoritarian parents have a strict set of rules and expectations. This approach controls, but also intimidates, and can inhibit a child. Rigid obedience is required.
• Authoritative parents also create clear behavioral guidelines, but this approach balances discipline with warmth. It promotes positive reinforcement, learning from mistakes, and infrequent use of punishment.
• Permissive or Indulgent parents espouse autonomy without consequences, in the name of granting a child freedom. This approach relies mostly on affection, reasoning, and explanation, and does not factor in personal responsibility.
• Uninvolved parents eschew limits altogether, and may ignore a child to the point of neglect. This is often the default approach when parents are emotionally and/or physically absent.
• The ideology of “motherhood” portrays mothers as the ultimate caregivers, however, fathers have begun to spend more caregiving time with their children.
Key Terms
• Authoritative parenting: Parenting that relies on positive reinforcement and infrequent use of punishment.
• Authoritarian parenting: A parenting style that relies on a strict set of rules and rigid obedience.
• Uninvolved Parenting: Often applies when parents are emotionally absent and sometimes even physically absent.
Child rearing is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Parenting refers to aspects of raising a child aside from the biological relationship. Parenting is usually done by the biological parents of the child in question, with governments and society playing ancillary roles. Orphaned or abandoned children are often reared by non-parent blood relations.
Parenting Styles
Developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind identified three main parenting styles in early child development: Authoritative, Authoritarian, and Permissive. These parenting styles were later expanded to four, including an Uninvolved style. They involve combinations of acceptance and responsiveness on the one hand, and demand and control on the other.
Authoritarian parenting is very rigid and strict. Parents who practice it have a set of rules and expectations, and they require rigid obedience. If rules are not followed, punishment is most often used to ensure obedience.
Authoritative parenting relies on positive reinforcement and infrequent use of punishment. These parents are more aware of a child’s feelings and capabilities, and support the development of a child’s autonomy within reasonable limits. There is a give-and-take atmosphere involved in parent-child communication, and both control and support are exercised.
With Permissive or Indulgent parenting, a child’s freedom and autonomy are valued above all. These parents rarely find fault with their child and when they do, they tend to rely mostly on reasoning and explanation. There are few rules, few consequences, and children are said to be free from external constraints.
In Uninvolved families, parents are often emotionally absent and sometimes even physically absent. Expectations and regular communication are minimal. These parents are not responsive to a child’s needs and do not demand anything of them behaviorally. They provide for basic survival, but offer little to no engagement.
Parental Roles and Responsibilities
The ideology of “motherhood” portrays mothers as the ultimate caregivers. They invest copious time in their children, which may affect their job and role in the labor market. Although stay-at-home moms are less common in today’s economy, women statistically spend more time nurturing children than men do.
However, fathers are beginning to spend more hands-on time with their children as parenting roles evolve. Couples are now more likely to share household and child-rearing responsibilities, such as bathing, dressing, feeding, changing diapers, and comforting children, along with cooking and cleaning.
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Learning Objectives
• Explain the social functions of the family through the perspective of structural functionalism
Structural functionalism is a framework that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. In this way, society is like an organism and each aspect of society (institutions, social constructs, etc.) is like an organ that works together to keep the whole functioning smoothly. This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole. Functionalism addresses society in terms of the function of its constituent elements: norms, customs, traditions and institutions. Functionalists, in general, identify a number of functions families typically perform: reproduction; socialization; care, protection, and emotional support; assignment of status; and regulation of sexual behavior through the norm of legitimacy.
The Family
Radcliffe-Brown proposed that most stateless, “primitive” societies that lack strong centralized institutions are based on an association of corporate-descent groups. Structural functionalism also took on the argument that the basic building block of society is the nuclear family, and that the clan is an outgrowth, not vice versa. Durkheim was concerned with the question of how certain societies maintain internal stability and survive over time. Based on the metaphor above of an organism in which many parts function together to sustain the whole, Durkheim argued that complicated societies are held together by organic solidarity.
Functions of the Family
For functionalists, the family creates well-integrated members of society and instills culture into the new members of society. It provides important ascribed statuses such as social class and ethnicity to new members. It is responsible for social replacement by reproducing new members, to replace its dying members. Further, the family gives individuals property rights and also affords the assignment and maintenance of kinship order. Lastly, families offer material and emotional security and provides care and support for the individuals who need care.
Key Points
• Functionalists identify a number of functions families typically perform: reproduction; socialization; care, protection, and emotional support; assignment of status; and regulation of sexual behavior through social norms.
• For functionalists, the family creates well-integrated members of society by instilling the social culture into children.
• Radcliffe-Brown proposed that most stateless, “primitive” societies, lacking strong centralized institutions, are based on an association of descent groups. These clans emerge from family units.
Key Terms
• family: A group of people related by blood, marriage, law or custom.
• Radcliffe-Brown: A British social anthropologist from the early twentieth century who contributed to the development of the theory of structural-functionalism.
• institution: An established organization, especially one dedicated to education, public service, culture, or the care of the destitute, poor etc.
12.3B: The Conflict Perspective
Learning Objectives
• Analyze the family from the perspective of conflict theory
The Conflict perspective refers to the inequalities that exist in all societies globally. Conflict theory is particularly interested in the various aspects of master status in social position—the primary identifying characteristic of an individual seen in terms of race or ethnicity, sex or gender, age, religion, ability or disability, and socio-economic status. According to the Conflict paradigm, every society is plagued by inequality based on social differences among the dominant group and all of the other groups in society. When we are analyzing any element of society from this perspective, we need to look at the structures of wealth, power and status, and the ways in which those structures maintain social, economic, political and coercive power of one group at the expense of others.
The Family
According to conflict theorists, the family works toward the continuance of social inequality within a society by maintaining and reinforcing the status quo. Because inheritance, education and social capital are transmitted through the family structure, wealthy families are able to keep their privileged social position for their members, while individuals from poor families are denied similar status.
Conflict theorists have also seen the family as a social arrangement benefiting men more than women, allowing men to maintain a position of power. The traditional family form in most cultures is patriarchal, contributing to inequality between the sexes. Males tend to have more power and females tend to have less. Traditional male roles and responsibilities are valued more than the traditional roles done by their wives (i.e., housekeeping, child rearing). The traditional family is also an inequitable structure for women and children. For example, more than 60 percent of all mothers with children under six are in the paid workforce. Even though these women spend as much (or more) time at paid jobs as their husbands, they also do more of the housework and child care.
Key Points
• The conflict perspective describes the inequalities that exist in all societies globally, and considers aspects of society as ways for those with power and status to maintain control over scare resources.
• According to conflict theorists, the family works toward the continuance of social inequality within a society by maintaining and reinforcing the status quo.
• Through inheritance, the wealthy families are able to keep their privileged social position for their members.
• Conflict theorists have seen the family as a social arrangement benefiting men more than women.
Key Terms
• family: A group of people related by blood, marriage, law or custom.
• inheritance: The passing of title to an estate upon death.
• Conflict Perspective: A perspective in the social sciences that emphasizes the social, political or material inequality of a social group; critiques the broad socio-political system; or otherwise detracts from structural functionalism and ideological conservativism.
12.3C: The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective
Symbolic interactionists view the family as a site of social reproduction where meanings are negotiated and maintained by family members.
Learning Objectives
• Analyze family rituals through the symbolic interactionalist perspective
Key Points
• Symbolic interactionism is a theory that analyzes patterns of communication, interpretation, and adjustment between individuals in society. The theory is a framework for understanding how individuals interact with each other and within society through the meanings of symbols.
• Role-taking is a key mechanism that permits an individual to appreciate another person’s perspective and to understand what an action might mean to that person. Role-taking emerges at an early age through activities such as playing house.
• Symbolic interactionists explore the changing meanings attached to family. Symbolic interactionists argue that shared activities help to build emotional bonds, and that marriage and family relationships are based on negotiated meanings.
• The interactionist perspective emphasizes that families reinforce and rejuvenate bonds through symbolic rituals such as family meals and holidays.
Key Terms
• family: A group of people related by blood, marriage, law or custom.
• ritual: Rite; a repeated set of actions
• bonds: Ties and relationships between individuals.
Symbolic interactionism is a social theory that focuses on the analysis of patterns of communication, interpretation, and adjustment between individuals in relation to the meanings of symbols. According to the theory, an individual’s verbal and nonverbal responses are constructed in expectation of how the initial speaker will react.
This emphasis on symbols, negotiated meaning, and the construction of society as an aspect of symbolic interactionism focuses attention on the roles that people play in society. Role-taking is a key mechanism through which an individual can appreciate another person’s perspective and better understand the significance of a particular action to that person. Role-taking begins at an early age, through such activities as playing house and pretending to be different people. These activities have an improvisational quality that contrasts with, say, an actor’s scripted role-playing. In social contexts, the uncertainty of roles places the burden of role-making on the people in a given situation.
Ethnomethodology, an offshoot of symbolic interactionism, examines how people’s interactions can create the illusion of a shared social order despite a lack of mutual understanding and the presence of differing perspectives. Harold Garfinkel demonstrated this situation through so-called experiments in trust, or breaching experiments, wherein students would interrupt ordinary conversations because they refused to take for granted that they knew what the other person was saying.
The Family
Symbolic interactionists also explore the changing meanings attached to family. They argue that shared activities help to build emotional bonds among family members, and that marriage and family relationships are based on negotiated meanings. The interactionist perspective emphasizes that families reinforce and rejuvenate bonds through symbolic mechanism rituals such as family meals and holidays. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.03%3A_Sociological_Perspectives_on_Family/12.3A%3A_The_Functionalist_Perspective.txt |
Feminists view the family as a historical institution that has maintained and perpetuated sexual inequalities.
Learning Objectives
• Describe the goals of first and second-wave feminism
Key Points
• Feminism is a broad term that is the result of several historical social movements attempting to gain equal economic, political, and social rights for women.
• First-wave feminism focused mainly on legal equality, such as voting, education, employment, the marriage laws, and the plight of intelligent, white, middle-class women.
• Second-wave feminism went a step further is seeking equality in family, employment, reproductive rights, and sexuality.
• Both feminist and masculinist authors have decried predetermined gender roles as unjust.
Key Terms
• gender: The socio-cultural phenomenon of the division of people into various categories such as male and female, with each having associated roles, expectations, stereotypes, etc.
Feminism is a broad term that is the result of several historical social movements attempting to gain equal economic, political, and social rights for women. First-wave feminism focused mainly on legal equality, such as voting, education, employment, marriage laws, and the plight of intelligent, white, middle-class women. Second-wave feminism went a step further by seeking equality in family, employment, reproductive rights, and sexuality. Although there was great improvements with perceptions and representations of women that extended globally, the movement was not unified and several different forms of feminism began to emerge: black feminism, lesbian feminism, liberal feminism, and social feminism.
Sociology of Motherhood
In many cultures, especially in a traditional western one, a mother is usually the wife in a married couple. Her role in the family is celebrated on Mother’s Day. Some often view mothers’ duties as raising and looking after their children every minute of every day. Mothers frequently have a very important role in raising offspring, and the title can be given to a non-biological mother that fills this role. This is common in stepmothers (female married to biological father). In most family structures, the mother is both a biological parent and a primary caregiver.
However, this limited role has increasingly been called into question. Both feminist and masculist authors have decried such predetermined roles as unjust. In the United States, 82.5 million women are mothers of all ages, while the national average age of first child births is 25.1 years. In 2008, 10% of births were to teenage girls, and 14% were to women ages 35 and older.
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• Ruth Dunn, The Three Sociological Paradigms/Perspectives. September 17, 2013. Provided by: OpenStax CNX. Located at: http://cnx.org/content/m33962/latest/. License: CC BY: Attribution
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• 8marchrallydhaka (55). Provided by: Wikipedia. Located at: en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/File:8marchrallydhaka_(55).JPG. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.03%3A_Sociological_Perspectives_on_Family/12.3D%3A_The_Feminist_Perspective.txt |
One parent households, cohabitation, same sex families, and voluntary childless couples are increasingly common.
Learning Objectives
• Summarize the prevalence of single parents, cohabitation, same-sex couples, and unmarried individuals
Key Points
• One recent trend illustrating the changing nature of families is the rise in prevalence of single-parent families.
• Cohabitation is an intimate relationship that includes a common living place and which exists without the benefit of legal, cultural, or religious sanction.
• While homosexuality has existed for thousands of years among human beings, formal marriages between homosexual partners is a relatively recent phenomenon.
• Voluntary childlessness in women is defined as women of childbearing age who are fertile and do not intend to have children.
Key Terms
• cohabitation: An emotionally and physically intimate relationship that includes a common living place and which exists without legal or religious sanction.
• Voluntary Childlessness: Women of childbearing age who are fertile and do not intend to have children, women who have chosen sterilization, or women past childbearing age who were fertile but chose not to have children.
Family structures of some kind are found in every society. Pairing off into formal or informal marital relationships originated in hunter-gatherer groups to forge networks of cooperation beyond the immediate family. Intermarriage between groups, tribes, or clans was often political or strategic and resulted in reciprocal obligations between the two groups represented by the marital partners. Even so, marital dissolution was not a serious problem as the obligations resting on marital longevity were not particularly high.
One Parent Households
One recent trend illustrating the changing nature of families is the rise in prevalence of single-parent families. While somewhat more common prior to the twentieth century due to the more frequent deaths of spouses, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the nuclear family became the societal norm in most Western nations. But what was the prevailing norm for much of the twentieth century is no longer the actual norm, nor is it perceived as such.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the change in the economic structure of the United States –-the inability to support a nuclear family on a single wage–-had significant ramifications on family life. Women and men began delaying the age of first marriage in order to invest in their earning power before marriage by spending more time in school. The increased levels of education among women, with women now earn more than 50% of bachelor’s degrees, positioned women to survive economically without the support of a husband. By 1997, 40% of births to unmarried American women were intentional and, despite a still prominent gender gap in pay, women were able to survive as single mothers.
Cohabitation
Cohabitation is an intimate relationship that includes a common living place and which exists without the benefit of legal, cultural, or religious sanction. It can be seen as an alternative form of marriage, in that, in practice, it is similar to marriage, but it does not receive the same formal recognition by religions, governments, or cultures. The cohabiting population, although inclusive of all ages, is mainly made up of those between the ages of 25 and 34. In 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau reported 4.85 million cohabiting couples, up more than 1,000% from 1960, when there were 439,000 such couples. More than half of couples in the United States lived together, at least briefly, before walking down the aisle.
Same- Sex Unions
While homosexuality has existed for thousands of years among human beings, formal marriages between homosexual partners is a relatively recent phenomenon. As of 2009, only two states in the United States recognized marriages between same-sex partners, Massachusetts and Iowa, where same-sex marriage was formally allowed as of May 17, 2004 and April 2009, respectively. Three additional states allow same-sex civil unions, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Vermont. Between May 2004 and December 2006, 7,341 same-sex couples married in Massachusetts. Assuming the percentage of homosexuals in Massachusetts is similar to that of the rest of the nation, the above number indicates that 16.7% of homosexuals in Massachusetts married during that time. Massachusetts is also the state with the lowest divorce rate.
Same sex couples, while becoming increasingly more common, still only account for about 1 percent of American households, according to 2010 Census data. About 0.5 percent of American households were same-sex couples in 2000, so this number has doubled, and it is expected to continuing increasing by the next Census data.
Childfree Couples
Voluntary childlessness in women is defined as women of childbearing age who are fertile and do not intend to have children, women who have chosen sterilization, or women past childbearing age who were fertile but chose not to have children. Individuals can also be “temporarily childless” or do not currently have children but want children in the future. The availability of reliable contraception along with support provided in old age by systems other than traditional familial ones has made childlessness an option for some people in developed countries. In most societies and for most of human history, choosing to be childfree was both difficult and undesirable. To accomplish the goal of remaining childfree, some individuals undergo medical sterilization or relinquish their children for adoption. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.04%3A_Recent_Changes_in_Family_Structure/12.4A%3A_The_Decline_of_the_Traditional_Family.txt |
Over the past three decades, marriage rates in the United States have increased for all racial and ethnic groups.
Learning Objectives
• Recognize changes in marriage patterns
Key Points
• Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people, called spouses, that creates kinship.
• Marriage laws have changed over the course of United States history, including the removal of bans on interracial marriage.
• Of all racial categories considered by the U.S. Census, African-Americans have married the least.
• Of all racial categories considered by the U.S. Census, Hispanics have married the most.
• The average family income for married households is higher than the average family income of unmarried households. However, marriage rates have increased for poverty -stricken populations as well.
Key Terms
• wedding: Marriage ceremony; a ritual officially celebrating the beginning of a marriage.
• Marriage Laws: The legal requirements that determine the validity of a marriage.
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people, called spouses, that creates kinship. The definition of marriage varies according to different cultures, but is usually an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged. Such a union is often formalized through a wedding ceremony.
Marriage Rates in the United States
Marriage laws have changed over the course of United States history, including the removal of bans on interracial marriage. In the twenty-first century, laws have been passed enabling same-sex marriages in several states. According to the United States Census Bureau, 2,077,000 marriages occurred in the United States in 2009. The median age for the first marriage of an American has increased in recent years; the median age in the early 1970s was 21 for women and 23 for men, and rose to 26 for women and 28 for men by 2009. As of 2006, 55.7% of Americans age 18 and over were married. According to the 2008-2010 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates, males over the age of 15 have married at a rate of 51.5%. Females over the age of 15 have married at a rate of 47.7%. The separation rate is 1.8% for males and 0.1% for females.
Marriage Trends
African Americans have married the least of all of the major ethnic groups in the U.S., with a 29.9% marriage rate, but have the highest separation rate which is 4.5%. This results in a high percentage of single mother households among African Americans compared with other ethnic groups (White, African American, Native Americans, Asian, Hispanic). This can lead a child to become closer to his/her mother, the only caregiver. Yet one parent households are also more susceptible to economic difficulties. Native Americans have the second lowest marriage rate at 37.9%. Hispanics have a 45.1% marriage rate, with a 3.5% separation rate.
In the United States, the two ethnic groups with the highest marriage rates included Asians with 58.5%, and Whites with 52.9%. Asians have the lowest rate of divorce among the main groups with 1.8%. Whites, African Americans, and Native Americans have the highest rates of being widowed, ranging from 5%-6.5%. They also have the highest rates of divorce among the three, ranging from 11%-13%, with Native Americans having the highest divorce rate.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, the average family income is higher than previous years, at \$62,770. Nevertheless, the percentage of family households below the poverty line in 2011 was 15.1%, higher than in 2000 when it was 11.3%.
12.4C: Unmarried Mothers
With the rise of single-parent households, unmarried mothers have become more common in the United States.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the factors involved in the increasing number of single-parent households
Key Points
• One recent trend illustrating the changing nature of families is the rise in prevalence of single-parent household.
• The expectation of single mothers as primary caregiver is a part of traditional parenting trends between mothers and fathers.
• In the United States, 27% of single mothers live below the poverty line, as they lack the financial resources to support their children when the birth father is unresponsive.
Key Terms
• nuclear family: a family unit consisting of at most a father, mother and dependent children.
• Primary Caregiver: The person who takes primary responsibility for someone who cannot care fully for themselves.
One recent trend illustrating the changing nature of families is the rise in prevalence of the single-parent household. While somewhat more common prior to the 20th century due to the more frequent deaths of spouses, the nuclear family became the societal norm in most Western nations. But what was the prevailing norm for much of the 20th century is no longer the actual norm, nor is it perceived as such.
Since the 1960s, there has been a marked increase in the number of children living with a single parent. The 1960 United States Census reported that 9% of children were dependent on a single parent; this number that has increased to 28% by the 2000 US Census. The spike was caused by an increase in unmarried pregnancies, which 36% of all births by unmarried women, and to the increasing prevalence of divorces among couple.
The prevalence of single mothers as primary caregiver is a part of traditional parenting trends between mothers and fathers. In the United States, 27% of single mothers live below the poverty line, as they lack the financial resources to support their children when the birth father is unresponsive. Although the public is sympathetic with low-wage single mothers, government benefits are fairly low. Many seek assistance by living with another adult, such as a relative, fictive kin, or significant other. Divorced mothers who re-marry have fewer financial struggles than unmarried single mothers, who cannot work for longer periods of time without shirking their child-caring responsibilities. Unmarried mothers are thus more likely to cohabit with another adult. In the United States, the rate of unintended pregnancy is higher among unmarried couples than among married ones. In 1990, 73% of births to unmarried women were unintended at the time of conception, compared to about 44% of births overall. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.04%3A_Recent_Changes_in_Family_Structure/12.4B%3A_Change_in_Marriage_Rate.txt |
Elderly care is the fulfillment of the special needs and requirements that are unique to senior citizens.
Learning Objectives
• Describe the challenges of elderly care in the U.S.
Key Points
• The Sandwich generation is a generation of people who care for their aging parents while supporting their own children.
• Elderly care encompasses such services as assisted living, adult day care, long-term care, nursing homes, hospice care, and in-home care, as well as less formalized caretaking, such as by an elder’s grown child.
• Given the choice, most elders would prefer to continue to live in their own homes rather than move to an elder home or caretaking facility.
• Respite care allows caregivers the opportunity to go on vacation or a business trip and know that their elder has good quality temporary care. Without this help, the elder might have to move permanently to an outside facility.
Key Terms
• sandwich generation: The generation of persons who are the children of baby boomers, whose lifestyle is governed by the fact that they must simultaneously care for the needs of their children and their own elderly parents.
• Respite Care: Temporary care that allows caregivers the opportunity to go on vacation or a business trip and know that their elder has good quality temporary care, for without this help the elder might have to move permanently to an outside facility.
Elderly care is the fulfillment of the special needs and requirements that are unique to senior citizens. This broad term encompasses such services as assisted living, adult day care, long-term care, nursing homes, hospice care, and in-home care. Because of the wide variety of elderly care found globally, as well as different cultural perspectives on elderly citizens, the subject cannot be limited to any one practice. For example, many countries in Asia use government-established elderly care quite infrequently, preferring the traditional methods of being cared for by younger generations of family members.
Elderly Care in the United States
The form of elderly care provided varies greatly among countries and is changing rapidly. According to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, the older population—persons 65 years or older—numbered 39.6 million in 2009. They represented 12.9% of the U.S. population, or about one in every eight Americans. By 2030, there will be about 72.1 million older persons, more than twice their number in 2000. In the United States, most of the large multi-facility providers are publicly owned and managed as for-profit businesses. Given the choice, most elders would prefer to continue to live in their own homes. Unfortunately, the majority of elderly people gradually lose functioning ability and require either additional assistance in the home or a move to an eldercare facility. The adult children of these elders often face a difficult challenge in helping their parents make the right choices.
One relatively new service in the United States that can help keep the elderly in their homes longer is respite care. This type of care allows caregivers the opportunity to go on vacation or a business trip and know that their elder has good quality temporary care. Without this help, the elder might have to move permanently to an outside facility. Another unique type of care cropping in U.S. hospitals is called acute care of elder units, or ACE units, which provide “a homelike setting” within a medical center specifically for the elderly.
The Sandwich Generation
The Sandwich generation is a generation of people who care for their aging parents while supporting their own children. According to the Pew Research Center, just over 1 of every 8 Americans aged 40 to 60 is both raising a child and caring for a parent, in addition to between 7 to 10 million adults caring for their aging parents from a long distance. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.04%3A_Recent_Changes_in_Family_Structure/12.4D%3A_The_Sandwich_Generation_and_Elder_Care.txt |
Voluntary childlessness in women is defined as women of childbearing age who are fertile and do not intend to have children.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the factors involved in voluntary childlessness
Key Points
• To accomplish the goal of remaining childfree, some individuals undergo medical sterilization or relinquish their children for adoption.
• The factors involved in voluntary childlessness include age, income, unmarried status, and higher education.
• Most societies place a high value on parenthood in adult life, so that people who remain childless intentionally are sometimes stereotyped as being “individualistic” people who avoid social responsibility and are less prepared to commit themselves to helping others.
Key Terms
• Childfree: Childfree (sometimes spelled child-free), also known as voluntary childlessness, is a form of childlessness. Voluntary childlessness in women is defined as women of childbearing age who are fertile and do not intend to have children, women who have chosen sterilization, or women past childbearing age who were fertile but chose not to have children.
• sterilization: A procedure to permanently prevent an organism from reproducing.
Childless Couples
Voluntary childlessness in women is defined as women of childbearing age who are fertile and do not intend to have children, women who have chosen sterilization, or women past childbearing age who were fertile but chose not to have children. Individuals can also be “temporarily childless” but want children in the future. The availability of reliable contraception along with support provided in old age by systems other than traditional familial ones has made childlessness an option for some people in developed countries. In most societies and for most of human history, choosing to be childfree was both difficult and undesirable. To accomplish the goal of remaining childfree, some individuals undergo medical sterilization or relinquish their children for adoption.
Factors Involved in Voluntary Childlessness
First, while younger women are more likely to be childless, older women are more likely to state that they intend to remain childless in the future. Thus age plays a significant role in the decision. Further, according to 2004 U.S. Census Bureau data, the proportion of childless women 15 to 44 years old was 44.6%, up from 35% in 1976. The higher a woman’s income, the less likely she is to have children: Nearly half of women with annual incomes over \$100,000 are childless. Third, being unmarried is one of the strongest predictors of childlessness.
Research also suggests that married individuals who were concerned about the stability of their marriages were more likely to remain childless. Most studies on this subject find that higher income predicted childlessness. However, some women report that the lack of financial resources was a reason why they decided to remain childless. Childless women in the developed world often express the view that women ultimately have to make a choice between motherhood and having a career. Lastly, the chance of being childless was far greater for never married women (35 to 44 yrs old), 82.5% vs. ever-married (12.9%). Chance of childlessness (age 35 to 44) by education level: graduate or professional degree (27.6%) vs non high school graduate (13.5%), high school graduate (14.3%), some college but no degree (24.7%), associate degree (11.4%), and bachelor’s degree (18.2%). The higher the level of education, the more likely a woman is to remain childless.
Social Attitudes to Remaining Childless
Most societies place a high value on parenthood in adult life, so that people who remain childless intentionally are sometimes stereotyped as being “individualistic” people who avoid social responsibility and are less prepared to commit themselves to helping others. With the advent of environmentalism and concerns for stewardship, those choosing to not have children are also sometimes recognized as helping reduce our impact, such as members of the voluntary human extinction movement. Some childless individuals are sometimes applauded on moral grounds, such as members of philosophical or religious groups, like the shakers.
Some opponents of the childfree choice consider such a choice to be “selfish.” The rationale of this position is the assertion that raising children is a very important activity. Proponents of child freedom posit that choosing not to have children is no more or less selfish than choosing to have children. In fact, choosing to have children may be the more selfish choice, especially when poor parenting risks creating many long-term problems for both the children themselves and society at large.
Organizations and Political Activism
Childfree individuals do not necessarily share a unified political or economic philosophy, and most prominent childfree organizations tend to be social in nature. Childfree social groups first emerged in the 1970s, most notable among them The National Organization for Non-Parents and No Kidding! in North America. Numerous books have been written about childfree people and a range of social positions related to childfree interests have developed along with political and social activism in support of these interests. The term “childfree” was used in a July 3, 1972 Time article on the creation of the National Organization for Non-Parents. It was revived in the 1990s when Leslie Lafayette formed a later childfree group, the Childfree Network. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.04%3A_Recent_Changes_in_Family_Structure/12.4E%3A_Childless_Couples.txt |
Household models include the single family and blended family home, shared housing, and group homes for people with special needs.
Learning Objectives
• Describe different household models
Key Points
• A shared house is a household in which a group of usually unrelated people reside together.
• A group home is a private residence designed to serve children or adults with chronic disabilities or special needs. This type of home usually has a maximum of six residents and a trained caregiver available 24 hours a day.
• A boarding house is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years.
• People who live together in a shared house are called roommates.
• A single room occupancy is a single room dwelling or a multiple-tenant building that houses one or two people in individual rooms.
Key Terms
• Single Room Occupancy: A multiple-tenant building that houses one or two people in individual rooms (or to the single room dwelling itself).
• roommate: A person with whom one shares an apartment or house (UK: flatmate or housemate).
• Group Home: A private residence designed to serve children or adults with chronic disabilities. Typically there are no more than six residents and there is a trained caregiver there twenty-four hours a day.
Household models in Anglophone culture include the single family and varieties of blended families, shared housing, and group homes for people with support needs. Other models of living situations that may meet definitions of a household include boarding houses, a house in multiple occupations in Great Britain, and a single room occupancy in the United States.
Shared Houses
A shared house is a household in which a group of often-unrelated people reside together. The term generally applies to people living together in rental properties rather than in properties in which any resident is an owner-occupier. A shared house is formed when a group of people move into a rental property; typically, one or more of these people has applied to rent the property through a real estate agent, been accepted, and signed a lease. People who live together in a shared house are called roommates. In both developed and developing countries, shared housing is an increasingly popular household model. This is due to a variety of economic and social changes, such as the declining affordability of home ownership, as well as delayed marriage and decreasing marriage rates.
Group Homes
A group home is a private residence designed to serve children or adults with chronic disabilities. Group homes typically have a maximum of six residents and a trained, on-site caregiver available 24 hours a day. Residents of group homes usually have either a chronic mental disorder or a physical disability that prevents them from living independently. They need regular assistance in order to complete daily tasks, such as taking medication or bathing. Other residents may be developmentally disabled, recovering from alcohol or drug addiction, or abused, troubled, or neglected youths. Some residents have behavioral problems that are potentially dangerous to themselves or others and require constant supervision. Since the 1970s, group homes have assumed the role of earlier institutions such as asylums, poorhouses, and orphanages.
Boarding Houses
In a boarding house, lodgers rent one or more rooms for a period ranging from one night to weeks, months, or even years. Common areas of the house are maintained and services like laundry and cleaning may be provided. Boarding houses usually offer bed and board, or at least some meals as well as accommodation. Formerly, boarders would typically share washing, breakfast, and dining facilities; in recent years, individual rooms have tended to have their own washing and toilet facilities.
Single Room Occupancy
A single room occupancy is a single room dwelling or multiple-tenant building that houses one or two people in individual rooms. As the value of urban land has increased, many of these properties have been renovated and made available at higher prices. This has played a role in the displacement of lower-income people who once lived in these properties; it has also been cited as a reason for the visible rise in homelessness across America since the early 1980s. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.04%3A_Recent_Changes_in_Family_Structure/12.4F%3A_Change_in_Household_Size.txt |
Women in the workforce have faced barriers, though they have greater access to education and employment in the contemporary era.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss three factors that restrict women’s access to certain occupations
Key Points
• Women have participated in the workforce for as long as men have, yet women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce.
• Historically, women’s lack of access to higher education effectively excluded them from the practice of well-paid and high status occupations.
• Access to higher education remains a significant barrier to women’s full participation in the workforce in developing countries.
• The gender pay gap is the difference between male and female earnings expressed as a percentage of male earnings.
• The feminization of the workplace is a label given to the trend towards greater employment of women and of men willing and able to operate with these more ‘feminine’ modes of interaction.
Key Terms
• Wage Gap: The difference between male and female earnings expressed as a percentage of male earnings.
• occupation: A regular activity performed in exchange for payment, including jobs and professions.
• Feminization of the Workplace: A label given to the trend towards greater employment of women and of men willing and able to operate with these more ‘feminine’ modes of interaction.
Women in the workforce earning wages or a salary are part of a modern phenomenon, one that developed at the same time as the growth of paid employment for men; yet women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce. Until modern times, legal and cultural practices, combined with the inertia of longstanding religious and educational conventions, restricted women’s entry and participation in the workforce. Economic dependency upon men has had the same impact, particularly as occupations have become professionalized over the 19th and 20th centuries.
Historically, women’s lack of access to higher education had effectively excluded them from the practice of well-paid and high status occupations. Entry of women into the higher professions like law and medicine was delayed in most countries due to women being denied entry to universities and qualification for degrees; for example, Cambridge University only fully validated degrees for women late in 1947, and even then only after much opposition and acrimonious debate.
Barriers to Equal Participation
As gender roles have followed the formation of agricultural and then industrial societies, newly developed professions and fields of occupation have been frequently inflected by gender. Some examples of the ways in which gender affects a field include: prohibitions or restrictions on members of a particular gender entering a field or studying a field; discrimination within a field, including wage, management, and prestige hierarchies; expectation that mothers, rather than fathers, should be the primary childcare providers.
Access to Education and Training
A number of occupations became “professionalized” through the 19th and 20th centuries, gaining regulatory bodies, and passing laws or regulations requiring particular higher educational requirements. As women’s access to higher education was often limited, this effectively restricted women’s participation in these professionalizing occupations. For instance, women were completely forbidden access to Cambridge University until 1868, and were encumbered with a variety of restrictions until 1987, when the university adopted an equal opportunity policy. Numerous other institutions in the United States and Western Europe began opening their doors to women over the same period of time, but access to higher education remains a significant barrier to women’s full participation in the workforce in developing countries.
Access to Capital
Women’s access to occupations requiring capital outlays is also hindered by their unequal access to capital; this affects occupations such as entrepreneur and small business owner, farm ownership, and investor. Numerous microloan programs attempt to redress this imbalance, targeting women for loans or grants to establish start-up businesses or farms, having determined that aid targeted to women can disproportionately benefit a nation’s economy.
Discrimination within Occupations
The gender pay gap is the difference between male and female earnings expressed as a percentage of male earnings, according to the OECD. The European Commission defines it as the average difference between men and women’s hourly earnings. There is a debate to what extent this is the result of gender differences, implicit discrimination due to lifestyle choices (e.g., number of hours worked, need for maternity leave), or because of explicit discrimination. The 2008 edition of the Employment Outlook report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that, while female employment rates have expanded considerably and the gender employment and wage gaps have narrowed virtually everywhere, women still have 20% less chance to have a job than men, on average, and they are paid 17% less than their male counterparts.
Feminization of the Workplace
In response to the pressure from feminism and cultural trends highlighting characteristics in workers that have culturally been associated with women, feminization of the workplace is a label given to the trend towards greater employment of women, and of men willing and able to operate with these more ‘feminine’ modes of interaction.
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Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage between the parties.
Learning Objectives
• Describe fault-based and no-fault divorce systems
Key Points
• Though divorce laws vary among jurisdictions, there are two basic approaches to divorce: fault based and no-fault based.
• Under a no-fault divorce system, divorce requires no allegation or proof of fault of either party; spouses can divorce simply because they no longer wish to remain married.
• Fault-based divorce systems require proof by one party that the other party has committed an act incompatible to the marriage.
• A summary divorce is used when spouses meet certain eligibility requirements or can agree on key issues beforehand. When a summary divorce is issued, the divorce does not go to trial.
• In a divorce mediation session, a mediator facilitates the discussion between the two parties by assisting with communication and providing information and suggestions to help resolve differences.
• For same-sex couples, divorce law is in its infancy and is less than clear on how such unions may be legally dissolved.
• For same-sex couples, divorce law is in its infancy and is less than clear on how such unions may be legally dissolved.
Key Terms
• Divorce Mediation Session: When a mediator facilitates the discussion between the two parties by assisting with communication and providing information and suggestions to help resolve differences. At the end of the mediation process, the separating parties have typically developed a tailored divorce agreement that can be submitted to the court.
• Uncontested Divorces: When the parties can agree and present the court with a fair and equitable agreement, approval of the divorce is almost guaranteed.
• Summary Divorce: When spouses meet certain eligibility requirements or can agree on key issues beforehand to avoid having a trial to dissolve a marriage.
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties. Divorce laws vary considerably around the world, but in most countries it requires the sanction of a court or other authority in a legal process. The legal process of divorce may also involve issues of alimony, child custody, child support, distribution of property, and division of debt. Between 1971 and 2011, several countries legalized divorce, the last one being Malta in 2011.
Types of Divorce
Though divorce laws vary among jurisdictions, there are two basic approaches to divorce: fault based, and no-fault based. Under a no-fault divorce system, divorce requires no allegation or proof of fault of either party. The barest of assertions suffice. For example, in countries that require “irretrievable breakdown,” the mere assertion that the marriage has broken down will satisfy the judicial officer. By contrast, fault-based divorce systems require proof by one party that the other party has committed an act incompatible to the marriage. This is termed “grounds” for divorce (popularly called “fault”) and is the only way to terminate a marriage under a fault-based system.
A summary divorce, available in some jurisdictions, is used when spouses meet certain eligibility requirements, or can agree on key issues beforehand. Key factors include a short marriage, no children, and minimal property. When the parties can agree and present the court with a fair and equitable agreement, approval of the divorce is almost guaranteed. These are termed uncontested divorces. If the two parties cannot come to an agreement, they may ask the court to decide how to split property and deal with the custody of their children. Finally, divorce mediation is an alternative to traditional divorce litigation. In a divorce mediation session, a mediator facilitates the discussion between the two parties by assisting with communication and providing information and suggestions to help resolve differences. At the end of the mediation process, the separating parties have typically developed a tailored divorce agreement that can be submitted to the court.
Divorce of Same-Sex Married Couples in the United States
Although marriage was previously defined as a legal union between one man and one woman in the United States, over the past decades several states have begun to consider adopting, or have adopted, legislation which legalizes same-sex marriage. Once legally married, same-sex couples are entitled to the same degree of financial security as their hetero-sexual counterparts, including, but not limited to, the right to receive their spouse’s death benefits, health insurance, life insurance and other protections. For same-sex couples, divorce law is in its infancy and is less than clear on how such unions may be legally dissolved. For example, if a same-sex couple is married in a state that recognizes gay marriage but returns to reside in a state that does not, they might find themselves in a situation where their own state, in failing to recognize their union, will also fail to enable them to divorce. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.05%3A_Divorce/12.5A%3A_Divorce_and_Its_Legal_Ramifications.txt |
Child custody laws describe the legal and practical relationship between a parent and his or her child.
Learning Objectives
• Contrast different types of custody
Key Points
• Physical custody involves the day-to-day care of a child and establishes where a child will live.
• If a child lives with both parents, each parent shares “joint physical custody” and each parent is said to be a “custodial parent”.
• Shared custody is an arrangement in which the child lives for an extended period of time with one parent and then for a similar amount of time with the other parent.
• Alternating custody is an arrangement in which the child lives for an extended period of time with one parent and then for a similar amount of time with the other parent.
• A custodial parent is a parent who is given physical and/or legal custody of a child by court order.
• A non-custodial parent is a parent who does not have physical and/or legal custody of his/her child by court order.
• In Troxel v. Granville (2000), the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that a biological parent holds a fundamental right in choosing how to raise one’s children as they see fit.
Key Terms
• Parenting Schedule: A schedule of which divorced parent is responsible for the child at any given point in time.
• Troxel v. Granville: A U.S. Supreme Court case (2000) that affirmed that a biological parent holds a fundamental right in choosing how to raise one’s children as they see fit.
Child custody and guardianship are legal terms, which are used to describe the legal and practical relationship between a parent and his or her child, such as the right of the parent to make decisions for the child, and the parent’s duty to care for the child. Following ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in most countries, terms such as “residence” and “contact” have superseded the concepts of “custody” and “access. ” Instead of a parent having “custody” of or “access” to a child, a child is now said to “reside” or have “contact” with a parent. For a discussion of the new international nomenclature, see “parental responsibility. ”
Residence and contact issues typically arise in proceedings involving divorce, annulment, and other legal proceedings where children may be involved. In most jurisdictions the issue of which parent the child will reside with is determined in accordance with the best interests of the child standard. Family law proceedings which involve issues of residence and contact often generate the most acrimonious disputes. While most parents cooperate when it comes to sharing their children and resort to mediation to settle a dispute, not all do. For those that engage in litigation, there seem to be few limits.
Types of Custody
Under family law, there are different types of custody. Alternating custody is an arrangement whereby the child lives for an extended period of time with one parent, and then for a similar amount of time with the other parent. While the child is with the parent, that parent retains sole authority over the child. Further, shared custody is an arrangement whereby the child lives for an extended period of time with one parent, and then for a similar amount of time with the other parent. Physical custody involves the day-to-day care of a child, and establishes where a child will live. A parent with physical custody has the right to have his/her child live with him/her. If a child lives with both parents, each parent shares “joint physical custody” and each parent is said to be a “custodial parent. ” Thus, in joint physical custody, neither parent is said to be a “non-custodial parent. ”
Custodial and Non-Custodial Parents
A custodial parent is a parent who is given physical and/or legal custody of a child by court order. A child-custody determination means a judgment, decree, or other order of a court providing for the legal custody, physical custody, or visitation with respect to a child. The term includes a permanent, temporary, initial, and modification order. The term does not include an order relating to child support or other monetary obligation of an individual. A non-custodial parent is a parent who does not have physical and/or legal custody of his/her child by court order.
Child Custody Laws in the United States
In Troxel v. Granville (2000), the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that a biological parent holds a fundamental right in choosing how to raise one’s children as they see fit. Later in the case of O’Donnell-Lamont (2004), the court affirmed an Oregon statute requiring a presumption that the parent acts in the child’s best interests, to be met prior to applying the best interests of the child standard, placing both parties on equal footing.
A New Terminology?
In some places, courts and legal professionals are beginning to use the term “parenting schedule” instead of “custody and visitation. ” The new terminology eliminates the distinction between custodial and noncustodial parents and also attempts to build upon the best interests of the children by crafting schedules that meet the developmental needs of the children. For example, younger children need shorter, more frequent time with parents, whereas older children and teenagers may demand less frequent shifts yet longer blocks of time with each parent. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.05%3A_Divorce/12.5B%3A_Child_Custody_Laws.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Name three important statistical trends in divorce in the U.S.
Divorce statistics vary across the world. On average, first marriages that end in divorce last about eight years. Of the first marriages for women from 1955 to 1959, about 79% marked their 15th anniversary, compared with only 57% for women who married for the first time from 1985 to 1989. The median time between divorce and a second marriage was about three and a half years.
Successful Marriages
Success in marriage has been associated with higher education and higher age. 81% of college graduates, over 26 years of age, who wed in the 1980’s, were still married 20 years later. 65% of college graduates under 26, who married in the 1980’s, were still married 20 years later. 49% of high school graduates under 26 years old, who married in the 1980’s, were still married 20 years later. Population studies have found that in 2004 and 2008, liberal -voting states have lower rates of divorce than conservative-voting states, possibly because people in liberal states tend to wait longer before getting married. In 2009, 2.9% of adults 35–39 without a college degree were divorced, compared with 1.6% with a college education.
Divorce in the United States
Divorce rates in the United States have been dropping during the last few decades. Data indicates that marriages have lasted longer in the 21st century than they did in the 1990’s. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that from 1975 to 1988, in families with children present, wives file for divorce in approximately two-thirds of cases. In 1975, 71.4% of the cases were filed by women, and in 1988, 65% were filed by women. It is estimated that upwards of 95% of divorces in the U.S. are “uncontested,” because the two parties are able to come to an agreement without a hearing about the property, children, and support issues. A 2011 study found a 1% increase in the unemployment rate correlated with a 1% decrease in the divorce rate, presumably because more people were financially challenged to afford the legal proceedings.
Divorce around the World
One study estimated that legal reforms accounted for about 20% of the increase in divorce rates in Europe between 1960 and 2002. In Australia, nearly every third marriage ends in divorce. After reaching a peak divorce rate of 2.7 per 1,000 residents in 2001, the Australian rate declined to 2.3 per 1,000 in 2007. In Japan, divorces were on a generally upward trend from the 1960’s until 2002 when they hit a peak of 290,000. Since then, both the number of divorces and the divorce rate have declined for six years straight.
Key Points
• Success in marriage has been associated with higher education and higher age.
• The growth of divorce rates in the United States have been dropping during the last few decades.
• One study estimated that legal reforms accounted for about 20% of the increase in divorce rates in Europe between 1960 and 2002.
Key Terms
• Divorce Statistics: Quantitative measures of marriage and marital dissolution. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.05%3A_Divorce/12.5C%3A_Statistical_Trends_in_Divorce.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Discuss five factors that may lead marriages to end in divorce
Numerous studies have tried to determine why 50 percent of marriages in the United States end in divorce within the first 25 years. While not conclusive, the predominate factors that lead marriages to end in divorce are infidelity, adultery domestic violence, midlife crises, inexperience, and addictions such as alcoholism and gambling.
Causes of Divorce
Adultery
Adultery is voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than the lawful spouse. Historically, adultery has been considered a serious offense in many cultures. Even in jurisdictions where adultery is not a criminal offense itself, it may still have legal consequences, particularly in divorce cases.
Infidelity
More narrowly, infidelity most commonly refers to a breach of the expectation of sexual exclusivity that is expressed or implied in intimate relationships in many cultures.
Domestic Violence
Domestic violence is defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one partner against another in an intimate relationship such as marriage or domestic partnership.
Midlife Crisis
A midlife crisis is a term that was coined by Elliott Jaques in 1965 that suggests it is a time when adults come to realize their own mortality and how much time is left in their lives. A midlife crisis is experienced by many people during the midlife transition when they realize that life may be more than halfway over, prompting a sudden change in behavior.
Marrying Too Young
The age at which a person gets married is also believed to influence the likelihood of divorce. Delaying marriage until one is older or more experienced may provide more opportunity to choose a more compatible partner
Addictions
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker’s health, personal relationships, and social standing. Problem gambling is an urge to continuously gamble despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop. Problem gambling often is defined by whether harm is experienced by the gambler or others, rather than by the gambler’s behavior.
Key Points
• Adultery is voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than the lawful spouse.
• Infidelity most commonly refers to a breach of the expectation of sexual exclusivity that is expressed or implied in intimate relationships in many cultures.
• Domestic violence is defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one partner against another in an intimate relationship such as marriage.
• A midlife crisis is a term that was coined by Elliott Jaques in 1965 that suggests it is a time when adults come to realize their own mortality and how much time is left in their lives, prompting a sudden change in behavior.
• Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages
• Problem gambling is an urge to continuously gamble despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop.
Key Terms
• domestic violence: Violence against another in an intimate relationship such as marriage or domestic partnership.
• Midlife Crisis: A term coined by Elliott Jaques in 1965 that suggests it is a time when adults come to realize their own mortality and how much time is left in their lives, prompting a sudden change in behavior
• infidelity: Unfaithfulness in marriage or other moral obligation. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.05%3A_Divorce/12.5D%3A_Factors_Associated_with_Divorce.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Compare and contrast the effects of divorce on infants and adolescents
Sociologists and psychologists have conducted research that shows the effects of divorce heavily depend on the child’s age at the time the divorce occurs. The child’s gender, personality, the amount of conflicts with the parents, and support of family and friends all contribute to the effects of divorce on a child.
Infants and Pre-School Children
Although infants may not understand the exact conflict, they do react to the difference in their parent’s mood and energy change. Some effects an infant may have include a loss of appetite and an increase in spit up. Pre-school children range from three to five years old and may often mistake the divorce as their own fault. Some of the effects for children at this age may include baby-like behavior such as old toys, a baby blanket, or even wetting the bed. They also may become depressed, uncooperative, or angry.
School-Aged Children and Adolescents
Children at this age have more of a difficult time adjusting to the parental divorce than younger or older children. At this age, children are able to understand the pain they feel due to the separation of their parents, but they are too young to control how they respond to the pain. Often children experience feelings of anger, grief, and embarrassment. In order to deal with the situation and cope, it is important that children become involved in activities with other kids. It is very common for children this age to hope that parents will eventually get back together.
Teens experience some of the same feelings as school-aged children. They feel anger, fear, depression, loneliness, and guilt. Some teens feel as though they must take on new responsibilities such as new chores and taking care of siblings. Teens may also doubt his or her ability to get married or stay married.
Children of divorced parents (those entirely from unhappy families) are reported to have a higher chance of behavioral problems than those of non-divorced parents (a mix of happy and unhappy families). Studies have also reported the former to be more likely to suffer abuse than children in intact families, and to have a greater chance of living in poverty. A 2002 article in Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review discusses a variety of health consequences for children of the unhappy couples that do divorce. Constance Ahron, who has published books suggesting there may be positive effects for children, interviewed ninety-eight divorced families’ children for We’re Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say About Their Parents’ Divorce. Data from this study, in which she describes the binuclear family, is available at the Harvard Library and online.
Although divorce may be beneficial in some instances, high-conflict divorce (especially during transition periods) is harmful to children. Children who are shuffled back and forth between households, and those who hear their parents bickering and fighting, are likely to suffer the most. The best practice to avoid problems for children is to spend more or equal time with them while minimizing the amount of transitions for the children.
Divorced and Unmarried Elderly
Sociologists believe that the rise in the number of older Americans who are not married is a result of factors such as longevity and economics. Women, especially, are becoming more and more financially independent which allows them to feel more secure with being alone. In previous generations, being divorced or single was seen differently than it is now. This has resulted in less pressure for baby boomers to marry or stay married. Demographers estimate that baby boomers who remain unmarried will face more financial struggles than those who are married.
Key Points
• Although infants may not understand the exact conflict, they do react to the difference in their parents’ mood and energy change.
• Pre-school aged children often mistake the divorce as their own fault.
• School-aged children have more of a difficult time adjusting to the parental divorce than younger or older children.
• Teens experience some of the same feelings as school-aged children. They feel anger, fear, depression, loneliness, and guilt.
• Sociologists believe that the rise in the number of older Americans who are not married is a result of factors such as longevity and economics.
• Elder women are becoming more and more financially independent which allows them to feel more secure with being alone.
Key Terms
• longevity: The quality of being long-lasting, especially of life. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.05%3A_Divorce/12.5E%3A_Children_of_Divorce_and_Impact_of_Divorce.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Contrast the role of fathers in different cultures
A father is defined as a male parent or individual progenitor of human offspring. The adjective “paternal” refers to a father and comparatively to “maternal” for a mother. Traditionally, fathers act in a protective, supportive and responsible way toward their children. Involved fathers offer developmentally specific provisions to their sons and daughters throughout the life cycle, and are impacted themselves by doing so. According to the anthropologist Maurice Godelier, the parental role assumed by human males is a critical difference between human society and that of humans’ closest biological relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—who appear to be unaware of their “father” connection.
In many cultures, especially traditional Western, a father is usually the husband in a married couple. Many times, fathers have a very important role in raising offspring, and the title can be given to a non-biological father that fills this role. This is common in stepfathers, or males married to biological mothers. In East Asian and Western traditional families, fathers are the heads of the families, which means that their duties include providing financial support and making critical decisions, some of which must be obeyed without question by the rest of the family members.
The Father complex in psychology is a complex pertaining to a group of unconscious associations, or strong unconscious impulses, which specifically pertain to the image or archetype of the father. These impulses may be either positive or negative. Whereas the idea of the father complex had originally evolved to deal with the heavy Victorian patriarch, by the new millennium there had developed instead a postmodern preoccupation with the loss of paternal authority, or the absence of the father. Alongside the shift from a Freudian emphasis on the role of the father to object relations theory’s stress upon the mother, psychoanalysis tended to single out the search for the father, and the negative effects of the switched-off father.
Key Points
• According to the anthropologist Maurice Godelier, the parental role assumed by human males is a critical difference between human society and that of humans’ closest biological relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—who appear to be unaware of their “father” connection.
• Stepfathers are males married to biological mothers of children whom they did not create.
• The father complex in psychology is a complex pertaining to a group of unconscious associations, or strong unconscious impulses, which specifically pertain to the image or archetype of the father. These impulses may be either positive or negative.
Key Terms
• Father Complex: A complex pertaining to a group of unconscious associations, or strong unconscious impulses, which specifically pertain to the image or archetype of the father.
• Maurice Godelier: An anthropologist who studies the differences in fatherhood between humans and apes.
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Family violence is defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one family member against another.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the various types of domestic violence, such as physical or economic, as well as the effects on all people involved
Key Points
• Physical abuse is abuse involving contact intended to cause feelings of intimidation, pain, injury, or other physical suffering or bodily harm.
• Sexual abuse is any situation in which force or threat is used to obtain participation in unwanted sexual activity.
• Verbal abuse is a form of emotionally abusive behavior involving the use of language.
• Economic abuse is a form of abuse when one intimate partner has control over the other partner’s access to economic resources.
Key Terms
• domestic violence: Violence against another in an intimate relationship such as marriage or domestic partnership.
• Economic Abuse: When one intimate partner has control over the other partner’s access to economic resources.
• Verbal Abuse: A form of emotionally abusive behavior involving the use of language.
Domestic violence is defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one partner against another in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation. In this definition, domestic violence takes many forms, including physical aggression or assault, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, controlling or domineering behaviour, intimidation, stalking, passive/covert abuse, and economic deprivation. Alcohol consumption and mental illness can be co-morbid with abuse, presenting additional challenges in eliminating domestic violence. In general, awareness, perception, definition, and documentation of domestic violence differ widely from country to country, and from era to era.
Forms of Domestic Violence
All forms of domestic abuse have one purpose: to gain and maintain control over the victim. Abusers use many tactics to exert power over their spouse or partner: dominance, humiliation, isolation, threats, intimidation, denial, and blame. Physical abuse is abuse involving contact intended to cause feelings of intimidation, pain, injury, or other physical suffering or bodily harm. Physical abuse includes hitting, slapping, punching, choking, pushing, burning, and other types of contact that result in physical injury to the victim. Physical abuse can also include behaviors such as denying the victim of medical care when needed, depriving the victim of sleep or other functions necessary to live, or forcing the victim to engage in drug/alcohol use against his/her will. Sexual abuse is any situation in which force or threat is used to obtain participation in unwanted sexual activity. Coercing a person to engage in sexual activity against his or her will, even if that person is a spouse or intimate partner with whom consensual sex has occurred, is an act of aggression and violence.
Emotional abuse can include humiliating the victim privately or publicly, controlling what the victim can and cannot do, withholding information from the victim, deliberately doing something to make the victim feel diminished or embarrassed, isolating the victim from friends and family, implicitly blackmailing the victim by harming others when the victim expresses independence or happiness, or denying the victim access to money or other basic resources and necessities. Degradation in any form can be considered psychological abuse.
Verbal abuse is a form of emotionally abusive behavior involving the use of language. Verbal abuse can also be referred to as the act of threatening. Through threatening a person can blatantly say they will harm you in any way and will also be considered as abuse.
Economic abuse is a form of abuse when one intimate partner has control over the other partner’s access to economic resources. Economic abuse may involve preventing a spouse from resource acquisition, limiting the amount of resources to use by the victim, or by exploiting economic resources of the victim.
Effects of Domestic Abuse
3.3 million children witness domestic violence each year in the US. There has been an increase in acknowledgment that children exposed to domestic abuse during their upbringing will suffer in their developmental and psychological welfare. Because of the awareness of domestic violence that some children have to face, it also generally impacts how the child develops emotionally, socially, behaviorally as well as cognitively. Some emotional and behavioral problems that can result due to domestic violence include increased aggressiveness, anxiety, and changes in how a child socializes with friends, family, and authorities. Bruises, broken bones, head injuries, lacerations, and internal bleeding are some of the acute effects of a domestic violence incident that require medical attention and hospitalization.
High amounts of stress, fear, and anxiety are commonly reported by victims still living with their perpetrators. These are known as the psychological effects of domestic violence. Depression is also common, as victims are made to feel guilty for ‘provoking’ the abuse and are frequently subjected to intense criticism. A reported 60 percent of victims meet the diagnostic criteria for depression, either during or after termination of the relationship, and have a greatly increased risk of suicide. Once victims leave their perpetrator, they can be stunned with the reality of the extent to which the abuse has taken away their autonomy. Due to economic abuse and isolation, victims usually have very little money of their own and few people on whom they can rely when seeking help. These are the financial effects of domestic violence. This has been shown to be one of the greatest obstacles facing victims of DV, discouraging them from leaving their abusers. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.06%3A_Family_Violence/12.6A%3A_Family_Violence.txt |
Child abuse is the physical, sexual or emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child.
Learning Objectives
• Analyze the differences between and prevalence of each type of abuse against children
Key Points
• Physical abuse involves physical aggression directed at a child by an adult.
• Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent abuses a child for sexual stimulation.
• Neglect is a passive form of abuse in which a perpetrator is responsible to provide care for a victim who is unable to care for himself or herself, but fails to provide adequate care.
• Emotional abuse includes things such as name-calling, ridicule, degradation, destruction of personal belongings, torture or killing of a pet, etc.
Key Terms
• child abuse: The physical, sexual, or emotional mistreatment of a child.
• Child Sexual Abuse: A form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent abuses a child for sexual stimulation.
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, or emotional mistreatment or neglect of a child or children. Different jurisdictions have developed their own definitions of what constitutes child abuse for the purposes of removing a child from his/her family and/or prosecuting a criminal charge. There are four major categories of child abuse: neglect, physical abuse, psychological/emotional abuse, and sexual abuse. Neglect is the most common type of abuse in the United States and accounts for over 60 percent of child abuse cases.
Physical Abuse
Physical abuse involves physical aggression directed at a child by an adult. Most nations with child-abuse laws consider the deliberate infliction of serious injuries, or actions that place the child at obvious risk of serious injury or death, to be illegal. Beyond this, there is considerable variation. The distinction between child discipline and abuse is often poorly defined. Cultural norms about what constitutes abuse vary widely among professionals as well as the wider public. Some professionals claim that cultural norms that sanction physical punishment are one of the causes of child abuse, and have undertaken campaigns to redefine such norms.
Sexual Abuse
Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent abuses a child for sexual stimulation. Effects of child sexual abuse include guilt and self-blame, flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, and fear of things associated with the abuse. Approximately 15 percent to 25 percent of women and 5 percent to 15 percent of men were sexually abused when they were children.
Emotional Abuse
Out of all the possible forms of abuse, emotional abuse is the hardest to define. It could include name-calling, ridicule, degradation, destruction of personal belongings, torture or killing of a pet, excessive criticism, inappropriate or excessive demands, withholding communication, and routine labeling or humiliation.
Neglect
Neglect is a passive form of abuse in which a perpetrator is responsible to provide care for a victim who is unable to care for himself or herself, but fails to provide adequate care. Neglect may include the failure to provide sufficient supervision, nourishment, or medical care, or the failure to fulfill other needs for which the victim is helpless to provide for himself or herself. The term is also applied when necessary care is withheld by those responsible for providing it from animals, plants, and even inanimate objects. Neglect can have many long-term side effects, such as physical injuries, low self-esteem, attention disorders, violent behavior, and even death. In the U.S., neglect is defined as the failure to meet the basic needs of children: housing, clothing, food, and access to medical care. Researchers found over 91,000 cases of neglect in one year using information from a database of cases verified by protective services agencies. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.06%3A_Family_Violence/12.6B%3A_Child_Abuse.txt |
Spousal abuse can be defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship.
Learning Objectives
• Evaluate the gender differences in domestic violence against both men and women in heterosexual and homosexual relationships
Key Points
• Determining how many instances of domestic violence actually involve male victims is difficult. Male domestic violence victims may be reluctant to get help for a number of reasons, including feeling ashamed because their victimhood negates their masculinity.
• Gender roles and expectations play a role in abusive situations.
• Domestic violence also occurs in same-sex relationships.
• Domestic violence also occurs in same-sex relationships.
Key Terms
• Violence against Women: Violence perpetrated against a female victim for reasons having to do with gender expectations.
• Violence against Men: Violence perpetrated against a male victim for reasons having to do with gender expectations.
The relationship between gender and domestic violence is a controversial topic. Debate revolves around the rates at which each gender is subjected to domestic violence and whether abused men should be provided the same resources and shelters that exist for female victims. Some studies suggest that men are less likely to report being victims of domestic violence due to social stigmas. Other sources argue that the rate of domestic violence against men is often inflated due to the practice of including self-defense as a form of domestic violence.
A problem in conducting studies that seek to describe violence in terms of gender is the amount of silence, fear, and shame that results from abuse within families and relationships. Another problem is that abusive patterns can tend to seem normal to those who have lived in them for a length of time. Similarly, subtle forms of abuse can be transparent even as they set the stage for normalizing further abuse. Finally, inconsistent definition of what constitutes domestic violence makes definite conclusions difficult to reach when compiling research.
Violence Against Women
Although the exact rates are widely disputed, especially within the United States, there is a large body of cross-cultural evidence that women are subjected to domestic violence significantly more often than men. In addition, there is broad consensus that women are more often subjected to severe forms of abuse and are more likely to be injured by an abusive partner. According to a report by the United States Department of Justice, a survey of 16,000 Americans showed 22.1 percent of women and 7.4 percent of men reported being physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, or date in their lifetime.
Violence Against Men
Determining how many instances of domestic violence actually involve male victims is difficult. Male domestic violence victims may be reluctant to get help for a number of reasons. Another study has demonstrated a high degree of acceptance by women of aggression against men. Some researchers have found a relationship between the availability of domestic violence services, improved laws and enforcement regarding domestic violence, increased access to divorce, and higher earnings for women with declines in intimate partner homicide by women.
Gender roles and expectations play a role in abusive situations, and exploring these roles and expectations can be helpful in addressing abusive situations. Likewise, it can be helpful to explore factors such as race, class, religion, sexuality, and philosophy. However, studies investigating whether sexist attitudes are correlated with domestic violence have shown conflicting results
Same-Sex Relationships
Domestic violence also occurs in same-sex relationships. Gay and lesbian relationships have been identified as a risk factor for abuse in certain populations. In an effort to be more inclusive, many organizations have made an effort to use gender-neutral terms when referring to the act of perpetrating and victimhood.
Historically, little interest has been directed at domestic violence in same-sex relationships. As the gay rights movement has brought gay and lesbian issues into public attention, more research has been conducted on same-sex relationships. A 1999 analysis of 19 different studies of partner abuse concluded that “lesbians and gay men are just as likely to abuse their partners as heterosexual men,” although the study also noted the uncertain nature of much of the contemporary research.
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In today’s world, some degree of education is necessary for people in most countries.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss recent worldwide trends in education, including mass schooling, the emergence of secondary education in the U.S., indigenous education, higher education, and online learning
Key Points
• Education is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people are passed from one generation to the next.
• Location contributes to a child’s lack of access to primary education. In certain areas of the world, children have difficulty getting to school.
• Gender often factors into a child’s access to education.
• Costs contribute to a child’s lack of access to primary education. High opportunity costs are often influential in the decision to attend school.
• Mass schooling has perpetuated the idea that everyone has a right to be educated regardless of his/her cultural background and gender.
• A lack of access to education is one of the primary barriers to human development.
Key Terms
• Mass Schooling: The phenomenon that describes the rise in school attendance worldwide.
• Internationalization of Education: The increased emphasis on international cultural exchange in the course of education.
Education Today
In today’s world, some degree of education is necessary for people in most countries. Due to population growth and the proliferation of compulsory education, UNESCO has calculated that in the next 30 years, more people will receive formal education than in any prior period of human history. In fact, illiteracy and the percentage of populations without any schooling have already decreased, from 36% in 1960 to 25% in 2000.
Education in its broadest, most general sense is a means through which the aims and habits of a group of people is passed from one generation to the next. Generally, education results from any experience that affects the way in which one thinks, feels, or acts. In its narrowest, most technical sense, education is the formal process (e.g., instruction in schools) by which society deliberately passes accumulated knowledge, skills, customs, and values from one generation to the next.
Education in the Developing World
India is developing technologies that bypass land-based telephone and internet lines. The country recently launched EDUSAT, an education satellite that can reach a great number of people at a significantly reduced cost. Another initiative, started by the OLPC foundation, involving a group from the MIT Media Lab, and supported by several major corporations, has developed a \$100 laptop for the delivery of educational programs. As of 2008, the laptops were already widely available.
In Africa, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) has launched an e-school program. The goal is to provide 600,000 primary and high schools with computer equipment, learning materials, and internet access within 10 years. Private groups, like Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are also working to improve access to education through such programs as the Perpetual Education Fund.
Internationalization ( Globalization and Education)
Education is becoming increasingly international, and mass schooling has promoted the fundamental idea that everyone has a right to be educated regardless of his/her cultural background. In Europe, for example, the Socrates-Erasmus Program fosters exchanges between European universities, while the Soros Foundation provides educational opportunities to students from central Asia and eastern Europe. Programs such as the International Baccalaureate have also contributed to the internationalization of education. Some scholars argue that, regardless of the perceived quality of different educational systems, experiencing a different system of education can be an important and enriching aspect of an international learning experience. Meanwhile, the global online campus, led by American universities, has promoted free access to class materials and lectures recorded during actual classes. This project further facilitates the globalization of education.
Recent Worldwide Trends
The emergence of secondary education in the United States did not occur until 1910, when a rise in big business and technological advances in factories (for instance, the emergence of electrification) required skilled workers. In order to meet new job requirements, high schools were created with curriculums focused on practical job skills that would prepare students for white- or blue-collar work. This emerging system proved to be beneficial for both the employer and the employee; improved job skills increased efficiency and lowered costs for employers, while skilled employees received higher wages.
Indigenous education refers to the inclusion of indigenous knowledge, models, methods, and content within formal and non-formal educational systems. Often in a post-colonial context, the growing recognition and use of indigenous education methods has been a response to the erosion and loss of indigenous knowledge and language through earlier processes of colonialism. It has also enabled indigenous communities to strengthen links to their traditional languages and cultures, a process that has also been linked to increased academic success.
Higher education generally involves work towards a degree-level or foundation degree qualification. In most developed countries, a high proportion of the population (up to 50%) now obtain higher education at some point in their lives. Higher education is therefore important to national economies as both a significant industry in its own right and a source of trained and educated personnel.
As a result of the Internet, higher education is increasingly open and accessible. Online learning gives students flexibility and choice in terms of what, when, and at what pace they learn. Many universities and organizations are creating open educational resources that self-motivated students can access anywhere and at any time. Unlike traditional forms of higher education, open, online education generally does not take the form of recognized degree programs. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.06%3A_Family_Violence/12.6D%3A_Education_and_the_Global_Perspective.txt |
It has been argued that high rates of education are essential for countries to be able to achieve high levels of economic growth.
Learning Objectives
• Define education economics, human capital, human capital flight, and educational technology
Key Points
• In the developing world, there is economic pressure from those parents who prioritize sending their children to work to make money in the short term over any long-term benefits of education.
• Education economics is the study of economic issues relating to education, including the demand for education and the financing and provision of education.
• The central idea of human capital is that undertaking education is investment in the acquisition of skills and knowledge which will increase earnings.
• Human capital flight, more commonly referred to as the ” brain drain,” is the large-scale emigration of a large group of individuals with technical skills or knowledge.
• Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.
Key Terms
• human capital: The stock of competencies, knowledge, social, and personality attributes, including creativity, embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value.
• brain drain: The migration of educated or talented people from less- economically advanced areas to more economically advanced areas, especially to large cities or richer countries.
• Education Economics: The study of economic issues relating to education, including the demand for education and the financing and provision of education.
In developing countries, the number and seriousness of the problems faced is naturally greater. People are sometimes unaware of the importance of education, and there is economic pressure from those parents who prioritize their children’s making money in the short term over any long-term benefits of education. Recent studies on child labor and poverty have suggested, however, that when poor families reach a certain economic threshold where families are able to provide for their basic needs, parents return their children to school. This has been found to be true, once the threshold has been breached, even if the potential economic value of the children’s work has increased since their return to school.
Education and Economic Growth
It has been argued that high rates of education are essential for countries to be able to achieve high levels of economic growth. Empirical analyses tend to support the theoretical prediction that poor countries should grow faster than rich countries because they can adopt cutting edge technologies already tried and tested by rich countries. Education economics is the study of economic issues relating to education, including the demand for education and the financing and provision of education. The dominant model of the demand for education is based on human capital theory. The central idea is that undertaking education is investment in the acquisition of skills and knowledge, which will increase earnings or provide long-term benefits, such as an appreciation of literature. An increase in human capital can follow technological progress as knowledgeable employees are in demand due to the need for their skills, whether it be in understanding the production process or in operating machines. Human capital flight, more commonly referred to as the “brain drain,” is the large-scale emigration of a large group of individuals with technical skills or knowledge. The reasons usually include two aspects which respectively come from countries and individuals. The brain drain is often associated with de-skilling of emigrants in their country of destination, while their country of emigration experiences the draining of skilled individuals.
Educational Technology
Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources. Technology of education is most simply and comfortably defined as an array of tools that might prove helpful in advancing student learning and may be measured in how and why individuals behave. There are various types of technologies currently used in traditional classrooms. Among these are computers in the classroom; a website for every class; class blogs and wikis; wireless classroom microphones; and online media and interactive whiteboards.
Educational technology is intended to improve education over what it would be without technology. Its benefits include easy-to-access course materials; increased student motivation; improved student writing; subjects made easier to learn; and differentiated instruction. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.06%3A_Family_Violence/12.6E%3A_Education_and_Industrialization.txt |
A lack of access to education is one of the primary limits on human development.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the factors that impact education in societies worldwide
Key Points
• International development is a concept that refers to the development of greater quality of life for humanity.
• In 2000, the United Nations signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which includes eight Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 or 2020, one of which is Universal Primary Education.
• Location contributes to a child’s lack of access and attendance to primary education. In certain areas of the world, it is more difficult for children to get to school.
• Gender contributes to a child’s lack of access and attendance to education.
• Costs contribute to a child’s lack of access and attendance to primary education. High opportunity costs are often influential in the decision to attend school.
Key Terms
• Mass Schooling: The phenomenon that describes the rise in school attendance worldwide.
• Internationalization of Education: The increased emphasis on international cultural exchange in the course of education.
• Universal Primary Education: One of the eight Millennium Development Goals developed by the United Nations; An attempt to give all primary school aged children access to education.
International development is a concept that lacks a universally accepted definition, but it is most used in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context of human development–the development of greater quality of life for humans. In 2000, the United Nations signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which includes eight Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 or 2020. This represented the first time that a holistic strategy to meet the development needs of the world had been established, with measurable targets and defined indicators. Universal Primary Education is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals, and great improvements have been achieved in the past decade, yet a great deal remains to be done. The provision of education often focuses on providing free primary level education but also covers secondary and higher education. A lack of access to education is one of the primary limits on human development and is closely related to every one of the other sectors. Almost every development project includes an aspect of education, as development by its very nature requires a change in the way people live.
Universal Primary Education
There has been great progress achieved since 1999 in the achievement of the millennium development goal. UNESCO has found that the number of children enrolled in primary schools worldwide rose by more than 40 million between 1999 and 2007; the net primary enrollment in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 58% to 74% over the same period; and international aid commitments to basic education almost doubled from \$2.1 billion in 2002 to \$4.1 billion in 2007. However, despite all these important achievements, the world is currently not on course to achieve its target of universal primary education by 2015. Currently, there are more than 75 million children around the world of primary school age who are not in school. The majority of these children are in regions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and within these countries, girls are at the greatest disadvantage in receiving access to education at the primary school age. Moreover, it is estimated that there is a \$16.2 billion annual external financing gap between available domestic resources and what is needed to achieve the basic education goals in low income countries. This is due to current aid levels which address only 15% of that gap, resources often not provided to those countries who need it the most, and the amounts pledged not fully honored.
Factors Contributing to Lack of Access and Poor Attendance
Location contributes to a child’s lack of access and attendance to primary education. In certain areas of the world, it is more difficult for children to get to school. For example, in high-altitude areas of India, severe weather conditions for more than seven months of the year make school attendance erratic and force children to remain at home. Gender contributes to a child’s lack of access and attendance to education. Although it may not be as an obvious a problem today, gender equality in education has been an issue for a long time. Currently, there is a gender discrepancy in education. Enrollment is low for both boys and girls in sub-Saharan Africa, with rates of just 27% and 22%. Today, some 78% of girls drop out of school, compared with 48% of boys. Therefore, a child’s gender continues to contribute to access and attendance today.
Costs contribute to a child’s lack of access and attendance to primary education. High opportunity costs are often influential in the decision to attend school. For example, according to UNICEF, an estimated 121 million primary-school-age children are being kept out of school to work in the fields or at home. For many families in developing countries the economic benefits of no primary schooling are enough to offset the opportunity cost of attending.
Internationalization of Education
Education is becoming increasingly international. The most represented case is the spread of mass schooling. Mass schooling has implanted the fundamental concepts that everyone has a right to be educated regardless of his/her cultural background and gender differences. The system has also promoted the global rules and norms of how the school should operate and what is education. In Europe, for example, the Socrates-Erasmus Program stimulates exchanges across European universities. Also, the Soros Foundation provides many opportunities for students from Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Programs, such as the International Baccalaureate, have contributed to the internationalization of education. Some scholars argue that, regardless of whether one system is considered better or worse than another, experiencing a different way of education can often be considered to be the most important, enriching element of an international learning experience.
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• Education. Provided by: Wikipedia. Located at: en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Education%23Economics_and_education. License: CC BY: Attribution | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/12%3A_Family/12.06%3A_Family_Violence/12.6F%3A_Education_and_Liberty_in_the_Developing_World.txt |
Learning Objectives
• Discuss recent worldwide trends in education, including mass schooling, the emergence of secondary education in the U.S., indigenous education, higher education, and online learning
Education Today
In today’s world, some degree of education is necessary for people in most countries. Due to population growth and the proliferation of compulsory education, UNESCO has calculated that in the next 30 years, more people will receive formal education than in any prior period of human history. In fact, illiteracy and the percentage of populations without any schooling have already decreased, from 36% in 1960 to 25% in 2000.
Education in its broadest, most general sense is a means through which the aims and habits of a group of people is passed from one generation to the next. Generally, education results from any experience that affects the way in which one thinks, feels, or acts. In its narrowest, most technical sense, education is the formal process (e.g., instruction in schools) by which society deliberately passes accumulated knowledge, skills, customs, and values from one generation to the next.
Education in the Developing World
India is developing technologies that bypass land-based telephone and internet lines. The country recently launched EDUSAT, an education satellite that can reach a great number of people at a significantly reduced cost. Another initiative, started by the OLPC foundation, involving a group from the MIT Media Lab, and supported by several major corporations, has developed a \$100 laptop for the delivery of educational programs. As of 2008, the laptops were already widely available.
In Africa, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) has launched an e-school program. The goal is to provide 600,000 primary and high schools with computer equipment, learning materials, and internet access within 10 years. Private groups, like Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are also working to improve access to education through such programs as the Perpetual Education Fund.
Internationalization (Globalization and Education)
Education is becoming increasingly international, and mass schooling has promoted the fundamental idea that everyone has a right to be educated regardless of his/her cultural background. In Europe, for example, the Socrates-Erasmus Program fosters exchanges between European universities, while the Soros Foundation provides educational opportunities to students from central Asia and eastern Europe. Programs such as the International Baccalaureate have also contributed to the internationalization of education. Some scholars argue that, regardless of the perceived quality of different educational systems, experiencing a different system of education can be an important and enriching aspect of an international learning experience. Meanwhile, the global online campus, led by American universities, has promoted free access to class materials and lectures recorded during actual classes. This project further facilitates the globalization of education.
Recent Worldwide Trends
The emergence of secondary education in the United States did not occur until 1910, when a rise in big business and technological advances in factories (for instance, the emergence of electrification) required skilled workers. In order to meet new job requirements, high schools were created with curriculums focused on practical job skills that would prepare students for white- or blue-collar work. This emerging system proved to be beneficial for both the employer and the employee; improved job skills increased efficiency and lowered costs for employers, while skilled employees received higher wages.
Indigenous education refers to the inclusion of indigenous knowledge, models, methods, and content within formal and non-formal educational systems. Often in a post-colonial context, the growing recognition and use of indigenous education methods has been a response to the erosion and loss of indigenous knowledge and language through earlier processes of colonialism. It has also enabled indigenous communities to strengthen links to their traditional languages and cultures, a process that has also been linked to increased academic success.
Higher education generally involves work towards a degree-level or foundation degree qualification. In most developed countries, a high proportion of the population (up to 50%) now obtain higher education at some point in their lives. Higher education is therefore important to national economies as both a significant industry in its own right and a source of trained and educated personnel.
As a result of the Internet, higher education is increasingly open and accessible. Online learning gives students flexibility and choice in terms of what, when, and at what pace they learn. Many universities and organizations are creating open educational resources that self-motivated students can access anywhere and at any time. Unlike traditional forms of higher education, open, online education generally does not take the form of recognized degree programs.
Key Points
• Education is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people are passed from one generation to the next.
• Location contributes to a child’s lack of access to primary education. In certain areas of the world, children have difficulty getting to school.
• Gender often factors into a child’s access to education.
• Costs contribute to a child’s lack of access to primary education. High opportunity costs are often influential in the decision to attend school.
• Mass schooling has perpetuated the idea that everyone has a right to be educated regardless of his/her cultural background and gender.
• A lack of access to education is one of the primary barriers to human development.
Key Terms
• Mass Schooling: The phenomenon that describes the rise in school attendance worldwide.
• Internationalization of Education: The increased emphasis on international cultural exchange in the course of education. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/13%3A_Education/13.01%3A_Education_and_the_Global_Perspective/13.1A%3A_Education_and_the_Global_Perspective.txt |
It has been argued that high rates of education are essential for countries to be able to achieve high levels of economic growth.
Learning Objectives
• Define education economics, human capital, human capital flight, and educational technology
Key Points
• In the developing world, there is economic pressure from those parents who prioritize sending their children to work to make money in the short term over any long-term benefits of education.
• Education economics is the study of economic issues relating to education, including the demand for education and the financing and provision of education.
• The central idea of human capital is that undertaking education is investment in the acquisition of skills and knowledge which will increase earnings.
• Human capital flight, more commonly referred to as the ” brain drain,” is the large-scale emigration of a large group of individuals with technical skills or knowledge.
• Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.
Key Terms
• human capital: The stock of competencies, knowledge, social, and personality attributes, including creativity, embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value.
• brain drain: The migration of educated or talented people from less- economically advanced areas to more economically advanced areas, especially to large cities or richer countries.
• Education Economics: The study of economic issues relating to education, including the demand for education and the financing and provision of education.
In developing countries, the number and seriousness of the problems faced is naturally greater. People are sometimes unaware of the importance of education, and there is economic pressure from those parents who prioritize their children’s making money in the short term over any long-term benefits of education. Recent studies on child labor and poverty have suggested, however, that when poor families reach a certain economic threshold where families are able to provide for their basic needs, parents return their children to school. This has been found to be true, once the threshold has been breached, even if the potential economic value of the children’s work has increased since their return to school.
Education and Economic Growth
It has been argued that high rates of education are essential for countries to be able to achieve high levels of economic growth. Empirical analyses tend to support the theoretical prediction that poor countries should grow faster than rich countries because they can adopt cutting edge technologies already tried and tested by rich countries. Education economics is the study of economic issues relating to education, including the demand for education and the financing and provision of education. The dominant model of the demand for education is based on human capital theory. The central idea is that undertaking education is investment in the acquisition of skills and knowledge, which will increase earnings or provide long-term benefits, such as an appreciation of literature. An increase in human capital can follow technological progress as knowledgeable employees are in demand due to the need for their skills, whether it be in understanding the production process or in operating machines. Human capital flight, more commonly referred to as the “brain drain,” is the large-scale emigration of a large group of individuals with technical skills or knowledge. The reasons usually include two aspects which respectively come from countries and individuals. The brain drain is often associated with de-skilling of emigrants in their country of destination, while their country of emigration experiences the draining of skilled individuals.
Educational Technology
Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources. Technology of education is most simply and comfortably defined as an array of tools that might prove helpful in advancing student learning and may be measured in how and why individuals behave. There are various types of technologies currently used in traditional classrooms. Among these are computers in the classroom; a website for every class; class blogs and wikis; wireless classroom microphones; and online media and interactive whiteboards.
Educational technology is intended to improve education over what it would be without technology. Its benefits include easy-to-access course materials; increased student motivation; improved student writing; subjects made easier to learn; and differentiated instruction. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/13%3A_Education/13.01%3A_Education_and_the_Global_Perspective/13.1B%3A_Education_and_Industrialization.txt |
A lack of access to education is one of the primary limits on human development.
Learning Objectives
• Discuss the factors that impact education in societies worldwide
Key Points
• International development is a concept that refers to the development of greater quality of life for humanity.
• In 2000, the United Nations signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which includes eight Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 or 2020, one of which is Universal Primary Education.
• Location contributes to a child’s lack of access and attendance to primary education. In certain areas of the world, it is more difficult for children to get to school.
• Gender contributes to a child’s lack of access and attendance to education.
• Costs contribute to a child’s lack of access and attendance to primary education. High opportunity costs are often influential in the decision to attend school.
Key Terms
• Mass Schooling: The phenomenon that describes the rise in school attendance worldwide.
• Internationalization of Education: The increased emphasis on international cultural exchange in the course of education.
• Universal Primary Education: One of the eight Millennium Development Goals developed by the United Nations; An attempt to give all primary school aged children access to education.
International development is a concept that lacks a universally accepted definition, but it is most used in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context of human development–the development of greater quality of life for humans. In 2000, the United Nations signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which includes eight Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 or 2020. This represented the first time that a holistic strategy to meet the development needs of the world had been established, with measurable targets and defined indicators. Universal Primary Education is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals, and great improvements have been achieved in the past decade, yet a great deal remains to be done. The provision of education often focuses on providing free primary level education but also covers secondary and higher education. A lack of access to education is one of the primary limits on human development and is closely related to every one of the other sectors. Almost every development project includes an aspect of education, as development by its very nature requires a change in the way people live.
Universal Primary Education
There has been great progress achieved since 1999 in the achievement of the millennium development goal. UNESCO has found that the number of children enrolled in primary schools worldwide rose by more than 40 million between 1999 and 2007; the net primary enrollment in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 58% to 74% over the same period; and international aid commitments to basic education almost doubled from \$2.1 billion in 2002 to \$4.1 billion in 2007. However, despite all these important achievements, the world is currently not on course to achieve its target of universal primary education by 2015. Currently, there are more than 75 million children around the world of primary school age who are not in school. The majority of these children are in regions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and within these countries, girls are at the greatest disadvantage in receiving access to education at the primary school age. Moreover, it is estimated that there is a \$16.2 billion annual external financing gap between available domestic resources and what is needed to achieve the basic education goals in low income countries. This is due to current aid levels which address only 15% of that gap, resources often not provided to those countries who need it the most, and the amounts pledged not fully honored.
Factors Contributing to Lack of Access and Poor Attendance
Location contributes to a child’s lack of access and attendance to primary education. In certain areas of the world, it is more difficult for children to get to school. For example, in high-altitude areas of India, severe weather conditions for more than seven months of the year make school attendance erratic and force children to remain at home. Gender contributes to a child’s lack of access and attendance to education. Although it may not be as an obvious a problem today, gender equality in education has been an issue for a long time. Currently, there is a gender discrepancy in education. Enrollment is low for both boys and girls in sub-Saharan Africa, with rates of just 27% and 22%. Today, some 78% of girls drop out of school, compared with 48% of boys. Therefore, a child’s gender continues to contribute to access and attendance today.
Costs contribute to a child’s lack of access and attendance to primary education. High opportunity costs are often influential in the decision to attend school. For example, according to UNICEF, an estimated 121 million primary-school-age children are being kept out of school to work in the fields or at home. For many families in developing countries the economic benefits of no primary schooling are enough to offset the opportunity cost of attending.
Internationalization of Education
Education is becoming increasingly international. The most represented case is the spread of mass schooling. Mass schooling has implanted the fundamental concepts that everyone has a right to be educated regardless of his/her cultural background and gender differences. The system has also promoted the global rules and norms of how the school should operate and what is education. In Europe, for example, the Socrates-Erasmus Program stimulates exchanges across European universities. Also, the Soros Foundation provides many opportunities for students from Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Programs, such as the International Baccalaureate, have contributed to the internationalization of education. Some scholars argue that, regardless of whether one system is considered better or worse than another, experiencing a different way of education can often be considered to be the most important, enriching element of an international learning experience.
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Savage inequalities, written by Jonathan Kozol, is a book that examines inequality in education.
Learning Objectives
• Reproduce Kozol’s argument in “Savage Inequalities,” using a real life illustration
Key Points
• Kozol argues that racial- and class-based disparities in American education are the result of low spending by the federal government.
• Across cities in the U.S., Kozol observed students in schools with the lowest and highest spending per student. His observations illustrated the huge disparities between schools.
• According to Kozol, property taxes are an unjust funding basis for schools because they fail to challenge the status quo of racial-based inequality.
• Kozol concludes that the disparities in school quality perpetuate inequality and constitute de facto segregation.
Key Terms
• de facto segregation: When races are separated not by any law, but by everyday practices.
• property tax: An (usually) ad valorem tax charged on the basis of the fair market value of property. The scope of taxable property varies by jurisdiction, and it may include personal property in addition to real estate.
Savage Inequalities, a 1991 book by Jonathan Kozol, examines the class- and race-based disparities in education. The book is based on Kozol’s observations of classrooms in the public school systems of East St. Louis, Chicago, New York City, Camden, Cincinnati, and Washington, D.C. Kozol observed students in schools with the lowest and highest spending per student, ranging from just \$3,000 per student in Camden, New Jersey, to up to \$15,000 per student, per year in Great Neck, Long Island.
Kozol’s observations illustrated the disparities between schools. In poor schools, students face overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and understaffed buildings where even basic tools and textbooks might be missing. These schools tend to be located in areas with large proportions of minorities, high rates of poverty, and high taxation rates. But high taxation rates on low-value property do not generate much revenue, and these schools remain underfunded. Kozol argues that property taxes are an unjust funding basis for schools, one that fails to challenge the status quo of racial-based inequality. Even when state funding is used to partially equalize the funding between districts, inequalities aren’t erased. In Kozol’s words, “Equal funding for unequal needs is not equality. ”
Kozol concludes that these disparities in school quality perpetuate inequality and constitute de facto segregation. He argues that racial segregation is still alive and well in the American educational system; this is due to the gross inequalities that result from unequal distribution of funds collected through both property taxes and funds distributed by the state in an attempt to “equalize” the expenditures of schools.
Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, East St. Louis: Savage Inequalities, a 1991 book by Jonathan Kozol, examines the class- and race-based disparities in education. The book is based on Kozol’s observations of classrooms in the public school systems of East St. Louis, Chicago, New York City, Camden, Cincinnati, and Washington, D.C.
13.2B: Colemans Study of Between-School Effects in American Education
In 1966, the Coleman Report launched a debate about “school effects,” desegregation and busing, and cultural bias in standardized tests.
Learning Objectives
• Identify three key points of the Coleman report
Key Points
• The ways in which outcomes differ based on school characteristics is called “between school effects. ” The Coleman report found that these effects existed but were less important that student backgrounds.
• The Coleman Report found that school funding levels do not significantly affect student achievement, but student background and teacher effectiveness do.
• Sociologist James Coleman found that black students perform better in racially-integrated classrooms, which led to desegregated busing programs. Later, Coleman found that white flight undermined the advantages of busing.
• Sociologist James Coleman also found that standardized tests measured cultural knowledge, not intelligence, which put minority students at a disadvantage.
Key Terms
• white flight: The large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries, from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban areas.
• desegregation busing: Programs designed to mix races in public education by busing children from predominantly African-American neighborhoods into white neighborhood schools.
• Racially-Mixed Classrooms: Classrooms that contain pupils from a variety of racial backgrounds.
In the 1960s, the U.S. Department of Education commissioned a group of social scientists to write a report on educational equality in the United States. The group was led by sociologist James Coleman, and the report was one of the largest studies in history, surveying more than 150,000 students. In 1966, the finished report was published and was over 700 pages in length. The report, titled “Equality of Educational Opportunity,” came to be known as the “Coleman Report. ” At the time, it launched widespread debate on school effects, or the ways in which school-level characteristics influence student achievement. It also helped define debates over desegregation, busing, and cultural bias in standardized tests.
Findings
The Coleman Report was commonly presented as evidence that school funding has little effect on student achievement. In fact, the report did not deny that funding or other school effects matter, but it did argue that other factors are more important. Specifically, the report found that student background and socioeconomic status are much more important in determining educational outcomes than are measured differences in school resources. But it also affirmed that differences in schools—and particularly teachers—have a very significant impact on student outcomes. Thus, the report supplied evidence that different conditions in different schools could lead to different outcomes for different groups of students.
Although Coleman found that, on average, black schools were funded on a nearly equal basis by the 1960s, he also found that socially-disadvantaged black students profited from schooling in racially-mixed classrooms. This latter finding was a catalyst for the implementation of desegregated busing systems, which bused black students from racially segregated neighborhoods to integrated schools. Following up on this conclusion, Coleman found in later research in 1975, that desegregated busing programs had led to white flight from the higher-class, mixed-race school districts. When black students were bused in to these schools, white parents began to move their children out of such schools in large numbers. Thus, the mass busing system had failed: Black students would only benefit from integrated schooling if there was a majority of white students in the classroom.
Relevance for Standardized Testing
The Coleman Report also fed the debate over the validity of standardized testing. The report showed that, in general, white students scored higher than black students, but it also showed significant overlap in scores: 15 percent of black students fell within the same range of academic accomplishment as the upper 50 percent of white students. This same group of blacks, however, scored higher than the other 50 percent of whites. Importantly, though, the report pointed out that the tests administered in these schools were not measuring intelligence, but rather an ability to learn and perform in the American environment. The report states: “These tests do not measure intelligence, nor attitudes, nor qualities of character. Furthermore they are not, nor are they intended, to be ‘ culture free. ‘ Quite the reverse: they are culture bound. What they measure are the skills which are among the most important in our society for getting a good job and moving to a better one, and for full participation in an increasingly technical world. ” | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/13%3A_Education/13.02%3A_Education_and_Inequality/13.2A%3A_Savage_Inequalities.txt |
Tracking separates students within a school into different tracks based on their skills and abilities.
Learning Objectives
• Argue for or against tracking in classrooms based on the information in the text
Key Points
• Proponents of tracking argue that it allows teachers to better direct lessons toward the specific ability level of the students in each class.
• Critics worry that by keeping students separate, tracking tends to reinforce class- and race-based disparities and worsen educational inequalities.
• Detracking occurs when students are deliberately positioned into classes of mixed ability. As opposed to tracking, students are no longer placed in groups based upon academic achievement or ability.
• While tracking separates students according to their skills and abilities, critics point out that it reinforces disparities and worsens educational inequalities.
Key Terms
• within school effects: Ways in which inequality may be produced or maintained among students in the same school.
• tracking: An educational system in which the entire school population is assigned to classes according to whether the students’ overall achievement is above average, normal, or below average and in which students attend academic classes only with students whose overall academic achievement is the same as their own.
Whereas the Coleman Report focused on between school effects, or inequality between different schools, other research has looked at within school effects, or ways in which inequality may be produced or maintained among students in the same school. One of the primary mechanisms for creating and maintaining inequality within schools is tracking. Tracking was once popular in English-speaking countries, but is less used now.
Advantages
Tracking consists of separating pupils into groups by academic ability. Student can be tracked for all subjects or for certain classes and curriculum within a school. Proponents of tracking argue that it allows teachers to better direct lessons toward the specific ability level of the students in each class. Another positive aspect of tracking is that since it separates students by ability, students’ work is only compared to that of similar-ability peers. Supporters of tracking also note that it allows for higher achievement of high-ability students. A 1992 study by Kulik and Kulik found that high-ability students in tracked classes achieved more highly than similar-ability students in non-tracked classes.
Disadvantages
Studies show that, while tracking for regular instruction makes no real difference in scholastic achievement for low and average ability students, it does produce substantial gains for gifted students in tracks specially designed for the gifted and talented. In other words, tracking can promote even higher achievement among high-achieving students, but it does little to improve the achievement of lower achieving students. Additionally, some studies suggest that tracking can influence students’ peer groups and attitudes regarding other students. A 1992 study by Gamoran showed that students are more likely to form friendships with other students in the same tracks than students outside of their tracks.
Critics worry that by keeping students separate, tracking tends to reinforce rather than overcome educational inequalities. This may be particularly true since low-track classes tend to have higher proportions of low-income and minority students, while upper-track classes are often dominated by students from high socioeconomically backgrounds. In this respect, tracking may not only reinforce academic inequalities, but also reinforce class- and race-based disparities in educational quality. Students from more privileged backgrounds gain access to higher quality instruction in upper-level tracks, while, even within the same school, poorer students are relegated to lower-level, less challenging tracks.
The 2010 HBO documentary, A Small Act, documented Kenyan students’ difficulty affording secondary schools. These elite schools were viewed as pathway to law school, medical school, and other forms of advanced education. Students who were kicked out of school for insufficient funds were essentially fated to lives of poverty. In Kenya, having only a primary school education prepared one for menial labor, while secondary school equated to future social mobility for poor Kenyan children.
Detracking
Detracking occurs when students are deliberately positioned into classes of mixed ability. As opposed to tracking, students are no longer placed in groups based upon academic achievement or ability. Tracking can be associated with giving students in low-track classes less resources, fewer experienced teachers, low expectations, and non-challenging curricula. Proponents for detracking believe that low-track students will greatly benefit in school achievement if they are mixed in with high-track students.
Ability grouping, tracking and grouping alternatives: This video explores the history, practice, perils and alternatives to grouping students for classroom instruction according to their perceived abilities. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/13%3A_Education/13.02%3A_Education_and_Inequality/13.2C%3A_Tracking_and_Within-School_Effects.txt |
Conflict theorists argue that the democratic mission of education has failed because it has reproduced social and economic inequalities.
Learning Objectives
• Explain, using conflict theory, how inequality is socially reproduced
Key Points
• In democratic societies, education is meant to be a path to opportunity, and public education is meant to ensure society continues to strive for equality.
• Persistent evidence indicates that education’s democratic mission has failed; rather than overcoming inequality, the educational system appears to reinforce it.
• Inequality is continually socially reproduced because the whole education system serves the interests of the dominant classes.
• According to conflict theorists, the myth of individual success through education obscures an important social fact: the individual failures of many students are in fact explained by large-scale social forces.
• Conflict theorists maintain that schools are a means to convey to students what constitutes knowledge and appropriate behavior as determined by the state—those in power.
• According to conflict theorists, children from lower-class backgrounds face a much tougher time in school; they must learn the standard curriculum as well as the hidden curriculum of middle class values.
Key Terms
• Lower-Class Backgrounds: Upbringings that are lower on the socioeconomic hierarchy.
• social reproduction of inequality: The idea that inequality is continually socially reproduced because the whole education system is overlain with ideology provided by the dominant group.
In democratic societies, education is meant to be a path to opportunity, and public education is meant to ensure society continues to strive for equality. Students who work hard in school should be able to land good jobs and advance themselves, climbing the latter to social and economic success. Yet persistent evidence indicates that education’s democratic mission has failed; rather than overcoming inequality, the educational system appears to reinforce it. According to conflict theorists, this is a predictable result of capitalism and other forces of domination and inequality.
Social Reproduction of Inequality
Conflict theorists believe that educational institutions operate as mechanisms for the social reproduction of inequality. Inequality is continually socially reproduced because the whole education system is overlain with a dominant group ‘s ideology. The premise that education fosters equal opportunity is regarded as a myth, perpetuated to serve the interests of the dominant classes. According to this myth, those who fail to achieve success have only themselves to blame. According to conflict theorists, this myth obscures an important social fact—the individual failures of many students can be explained by large-scale social forces.
Conflict theorists argue that schools, like society in general, are based on exploitation, oppression, domination, and subordination. From teaching style to the formal curriculum, schools are a means to convey what constitutes knowledge and appropriate behavior as determined by the state—those in power. Thus, students must learn not only basic skills such as reading, writing, and math, but also skills useful in a capitalist economy and behaviors appropriate to the work environment, especially docility and obedience to a manager or boss—the teacher.
Class and Education
Some students may realize the perverse but unacknowledged goals of education, as they begin to see that much of what they learn seems, from their perspective, pointless. Anti-school values displayed by these children are often derived from their consciousness of their real interests. For example, working class students may begin to understand that they are in a double-bind: either they must strive to succeed, and in doing so abandon their own culture in order to absorb the school’s middle class values, or they will fail. Children from lower-class backgrounds face a much tougher time in school, where they must learn the standard curriculum as well as the hidden curriculum of middle class values. For those who aim to succeed and advance, they must confront the material inequalities created by unequal funding arrangements.
On the other hand, for middle and especially upper-class children, maintaining their superior position in society requires little effort. These students have the benefit of learning middle class values at home, meaning they come to school already having internalized the hidden curriculum. They also have access to higher quality instruction. In this way, the continuation of privilege and wealth for the elite is made possible. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/13%3A_Education/13.02%3A_Education_and_Inequality/13.2D%3A_The_Social_Reproduction_of_Inequality.txt |
Educational capital can produce or reproduce inequality and also serve as a leveling mechanism that fosters equal opportunity.
Learning Objectives
• Devise two separate scenarios, one in which educational capital serves as a leveling mechanism and one in which academic capital reproduces inequality
Key Points
• The term educational capital is a concept that expands upon the theoretical ideas of French sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu.
• Bourdieu’s perspective reveals how objective structures play an important role in determining individual achievement in school, but allows for the exercise of an individual’s own free will and abilities to overcome these barriers, although this choice is not without its penalties.
• Academic capital is a term used by sociologists to represent how an individual’s amount of education and other academic experience can be used to gain a more esteemed place in society.
Key Terms
• sociability: The skill, tendency or property of being sociable or social, and interacting well with others.
• Academic Capital: A term referring to how an individual’s amount of education and other academic experience can be used to gain a more esteemed place in society.
• Educational Capital: The social standing one achieves by succeeding in academia and achieving academic credentials.
Although schools’ manifest function is to educate and train intelligence, they also have latent functions like socializing students. Students who do best in school are not always the most intelligent, but are usually culturally competent and sociable. The manifest function of education is to transmit knowledge to students. However, education also offers several latent functions, one of which is to foster social skills. Like the academic skills learned there, the social skills learned in school turn out to be quite important to a student’s future success in life. Students who score high on measures of sociability earn more money and get more education than equally intellectually gifted students who achieve lower scores in social skills.
Manifest and Latent Functions
Manifest functions involve things people expect or can observe. In the above paragraph, it is the purpose of and people expect a school to teach or transmit knowledge. Latent functions are not generally recognized or intended; rather, they are a secondary effect of manifest functions. For example, it is not stated in the curriculum that children learn social skills at school, but as a result of being around and working with other children, socialization occurs. Socialization is slowly transforming into a manifest function, especially within special education and working with children on the autism spectrum, who suffer from serious social skill deficits. In these cases, social skills training is part of the curriculum for those particular children.
Educational Capital
The term educational capital is a concept that expands upon the theoretical ideas of French sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu who applied the notion of capital to social capital, cultural capital, and symbolic capital. Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein explored how the cultural capital of the dominant classes has been viewed throughout history as the “most legitimate knowledge. ” How schools choose the content and organization of curriculum and instructional practices connects scholastic knowledge to dynamics of class, gender, and race both outside and inside our institutions of education. Educational capital refers to educational goods that are converted into commodities to be bought, sold, withheld, traded, consumed, and profited from in the educational system. Educational capital can be utilized to produce or reproduce inequality, and it can also serve as a leveling mechanism that fosters social justice and equal opportunity. Therefore Bourdieu’s perspective reveals how objective structures play an important role in determining individual achievement in school, but allows for the exercise of an individual’s own free will and abilities to overcome these barriers, although this choice is not without its penalties.
Academic Capital
Academic capital is a term used by sociologists to represent how an individual’s amount of education and other academic experience can be used to gain a place in society. On an individual level, academic capital influences and informs several important aspects of life. In the most basic sense, academic capital is strongly tied to earning potential. Individuals with only a high school diploma, on average, make \$20,000 less annually than individuals with an undergraduate degree, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For individuals who do not have a high school degree, opportunities for monetary earning fall further, \$30,000 less than those with a degree.
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According to functionalists, the socialization process is coercive, forcing us to accept to the values and norms of society.
Learning Objectives
• Examine socialization in three ways – the functionalist perspective, and according to Merton and Parsons
Key Points
• Structural functionalists view the socialization process as one where the values and norms of society are agreed upon by all members of society because there is a “social contract” in effect which protects us from one another and keeps society stable and balanced.
• Socialization refers to the lifelong process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies, providing an individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within his or her own society.
• The values and norms of society are agreed upon by all members of society because there is a “social contract” in effect which protects us from one another and keeps society stable and balanced.
• Robert K. Merton coined the term “role model” and hypothesized that individuals compare themselves with reference groups of people who occupy the social role to which the individual aspires.
• The key processes for Talcott Parsons for system reproduction are socialization and social control.
• Socialization is supported by the positive and negative sanctioning of role behaviors that do or do not meet these expectations.
Key Terms
• Reference Groups: Groups to which a person may compare himself to.
• social contract: An implicit agreement or contract among members of a society that dictates things that are considered acceptable conduct.
Socialization is a term that refers to the lifelong process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies, providing an individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within his or her own society. Socialization describes a process that may lead to desirable or moral outcomes. Individual views on certain issues, such as race or economics, may be socialized within a society.
Functionalist Perspective on Socialization
The Functionalist paradigm describes society as stable and describes all of the various mechanisms that maintain social stability. Functionalism argues that the social structure is responsible for all stability and instability, and that that the social structure is continuously attempting to maintain social equilibrium among all the components of society.
According to functionalists, the socialization process is coercive, forcing us to accept the values and norms of society. The values and norms of society are agreed upon by all members of society because there is a “social contract” in effect which protects us from one another and keeps society stable and balanced. People follow and accept the values and norms of society in order to maintain their own safety as well as maintaining social order.
Robert K. Merton
The term role model generally means any “person who serves as an example, whose behavior is emulated by others. ” The term first appeared in Robert K. Merton’s socialization research of medical students. Merton hypothesized that socialization happens when individuals compare themselves with reference groups of people who occupy the social role to which the individual aspires. Beginning with Merton, sociologists call any group that individuals use as a standard for evaluating themselves and their own behavior a reference group. For example, an individual in the U.S. with an annual income of \$80,000, may consider himself affluent if he compares himself to those who earn roughly \$35,000 a year. If, however, the same person considers the relevant reference group to be those in the top 0.1 percent of households in the U.S., those making \$1.6 million or more, then the individual’s income of \$80,000 would make him or her seem rather poor.
Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons was heavily influenced by Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, synthesizing much of their work into his action theory, which he based on the system-theoretical concept and the methodological principle of voluntary action. The key processes for Parsons for system reproduction are socialization and social control. Socialization is important because it is the mechanism for transferring the accepted norms and values of society to the individuals within the system. Parsons never spoke about “perfect socialization”—in any society socialization was only partial and “incomplete” from an integral point of view. Socialization is supported by the positive and negative sanctioning of role behaviors that do or do not meet these expectations. A punishment could be informal, like a snicker or gossip, or more formalized, through institutions such as prisons and mental institutions. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/13%3A_Education/13.04%3A_The_Functionalist_Perspective_on_Education/13.4A%3A_Socialization.txt |
Cultural transmission is the way a group of people within a society or culture tend to learn and pass on new information.
Learning Objectives
• Analyze the importance of cultural transmission, particularly in terms of learning styles
Key Points
• Learning styles are greatly influenced by how a culture socializes with its children and young people.
• The process by which a child acquires his or her own culture is referred to as enculturation.
• On the basis of cultural learning, people create, remember, and deal with ideas. They understand and apply specific systems of symbolic meaning.
• A meme is “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. ” The term was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976).
• Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate successfully with people of other cultures.
Key Terms
• Intercultural Competence: The ability to communicate successfully with people of other cultures.
• Cultural Transmission: The way a group of people or animals within a society or culture tend to learn and pass on new information.
• Symbolic Meaning: Meaning that is conveyed through language; when one knows that X means Y.
Cultural transmission is the way a group of people or animals within a society or culture tend to learn and pass on new information. Learning styles are greatly influenced by how a culture socializes with its children and young people. The key aspect of culture is that it is not passed on biologically from the parents to the offspring, but rather learned through experience and participation. The process by which a child acquires his or her own culture is referred to as “enculturation. ” Cultural learning allows individuals to acquire skills that they would be unable to independently over the course of their lifetimes.
Cultural Transmission for Humans
Cultural learning is believed to be particularly important for humans. Humans are weaned at an early age compared to the emergence of adult dentition. The immaturity of dentition and the digestive system, the time required for growth of the brain, the rapid skeletory growth needed for the young to reach adult height and strength means that children have special digestive needs and are dependent on adults for a long period of time. This time of dependence also allows time for cultural learning to occur before passage into adulthood.
On the basis of cultural learning, people create, remember, and deal with ideas. They understand and apply specific systems of symbolic meaning. Cultures have been compared to sets of control mechanisms, plans, recipes, rules, or instructions. Cultural differences have been found in academic motivation, achievement, learning style, conformity, and compliance. Cultural learning is dependent on innovation or the ability to create new responses to the environment and the ability to communicate or imitate the behavior of others. A meme is “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. ” A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. The term was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976).
Intercultural Competence
Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate successfully with people of other cultures. In interactions with people from foreign cultures, a person who is interculturally competent understands culture-specific concepts in perception, thinking, feeling, and acting. The interculturally competent person considers earlier experiences free from prejudices, and has an interest in, and motivation towards, continued learning.
The development of intercultural competence is mostly based on the individual’s experiences while communicating with different cultures. While interacting with people from other cultures, the individual generally faces certain obstacles, which are caused by differences in cultural understanding between the two people in question. Such experiences motivate the individual to work on skills that can help him communicate his point of view to an audience belonging to a completely different cultural ethnicity and background. For example, showing the thumb held upwards in certain parts of the world means “everything’s okay,” while it is understood in some Islamic countries as a rude sexual sign. Additionally, the thumb is held up to signify “one” in France and certain other European countries, where the index finger is used to signify “one” in other cultures. In India and Indonesia, it is often regarded as wishing “all the best.” | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/13%3A_Education/13.04%3A_The_Functionalist_Perspective_on_Education/13.4B%3A_Cultural_Transmission.txt |
In academia, an individual’s educational level and other academic experience can be used to gain a place in society.
Learning Objectives
• Examine the implications of academia in society, especially in terms of structure, qualifications and academic capital
Key Points
• Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.
• Academia is usually conceived of as divided into disciplines or fields of study.
• The degree awarded for completed study is the primary academic qualification. Typically these are, in order of accomplishment, associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and doctorate.
• In the United States, “professors” commonly occupy any of several positions in academia, typically the ranks of assistant professor, associate professor, or full professor.
• Academic capital is a term used by sociologists to represent how an individual’s amount of education and other academic experience can be used to gain a place in society.
Key Terms
• Academic Capital: A term referring to how an individual’s amount of education and other academic experience can be used to gain a more esteemed place in society.
• academia: The scientific and cultural community engaged in higher education and research, taken as a whole.
Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research. In Western Europe, universities were founded in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the European institution of Academia took shape. Monks and priests moved out of monasteries to cathedral cities and other towns where they opened the first schools dedicated to advanced study. In the United States, the term “academic” is approximately synonymous with that of the job title professor, although in recent decades a growing number of institutions include librarians in the category of “academic staff. ”
Structure
Academia is usually conceived of as divided into disciplines or fields of study. The disciplines have been much revised, and many new disciplines have become more specialized, researching smaller and smaller areas. Because of this, interdisciplinary research is often prized in today’s academy, though it can also be made difficult both by practical matters of administration and funding and by differing research methods of different disciplines. In fact, many new fields of study have initially been conceived as interdisciplinary, and later become specialized disciplines in their own right. On recent example is cognitive science.
Qualifications
The degree awarded for completed study is the primary academic qualification. Typically, these are, in order of completion, associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and doctorate. In the United States, “professors” commonly occupy any of several positions in academia, typically the ranks of assistant professor, associate professor, or full professor. Research and education are among the main tasks of professors with the time spent in research or teaching depending strongly on the type of institution. Publication of articles in conferences, journals, and books is essential to occupational advancement. As of August 2007, teaching in tertiary educational institutions is one of the fastest growing occupations, topping the U.S. Department of Labor’s list of “above average wages and high projected growth occupations,” with a projected increase of 524,000 positions between 2004 and 2014.
Academic Capital
“Academic capital” is a term used by sociologists to represent how an individual’s amount of education and other academic experience can be used to gain a place in society. The term originated in 1979 when Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), a prominent French sociologist, used the term in his book, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. The book attempts to show how individuals are not defined by social class, but instead by their “social space,” which is dependent on each type of capital the individual has.
Much like other forms of capital, social capital, economic capital, and cultural capital, academic capital doesn’t depend on one sole factor but instead is made up of many different factors, including the individual’s academic transmission from his/her family, status of the academic institutions attended, and publications produced by the individual. Since Bourdieu first coined the term, it has been used widely to discuss many of the implications involved with schooling and the rise of individuals in academia. Numerous studies have been done involving the idea of academic capital, and scholars have disagreed on what counts as academic capital.
Bourdieu’s definition of the term is applicable to any individual. However, it seems that most references to academic capital point solely to professional teachers and researchers within higher education. For example, in 2009, Michael Burawoy defined academic capital as being estimated from an individual’s curriculum vitae, but admitted that it was subjective because some fields of study seem to value certain academic qualities more than others—research. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/13%3A_Education/13.04%3A_The_Functionalist_Perspective_on_Education/13.4C%3A_Academic_Skills_and_Knowledge.txt |
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas.
Learning Objectives
• Compare the difference between innovation and invention, as well as the pros and cons of each
Key Points
• Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.
• Innovation differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing something different rather than doing the same thing better.
• In society, innovation aids in comfort, convenience, and efficiency in everyday life.
• In the organizational context, innovation may be linked to positive changes in efficiency, productivity, quality, competitiveness, market share, and others.
• When an innovative idea requires a better business model, or radically redesigns the delivery of value to focus on the customer, a real-world experimentation approach increases the chances of market success.
• Once innovation occurs, innovations may be spread from the innovator to other individuals and groups. This process can be described using the “s-curve” or diffusion curve. This is known as the process of diffusion.
Key Terms
• organization: A group of people or other legal entities with an explicit purpose and written rules.
• business model: The particular way in which a business organization ensures that it generates income, one that includes the choice of offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, trading practices, and operational processes and policies.
• improvement: Increase; growth; progress; advance.
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of better and, as a result, a novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself. Innovation differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing something different rather than doing the same thing better.
Due to its widespread effect, innovation is an important topic in the study of economics, business, entrepreneurship, design, technology, sociology, and engineering. In society, innovation aids in comfort, convenience, and efficiency in everyday life. For instance, the benchmarks in railroad equipment and infrastructure added to greater safety, maintenance, speed, and weight capacity for passenger services. These innovations included wood to steel cars, iron to steel rails, stove-heated to steam-heated cars, gas lighting to electric lighting, diesel-powered to electric-diesel locomotives. By mid-twentieth century, trains were making longer, more comfortable, and faster trips at lower costs for passengers
Organization
In the organizational context, innovation may be linked to positive changes in efficiency, productivity, quality, competitiveness, market share, and others. All organizations can innovate, including hospitals, universities, and local governments. For instance, former Mayor Martin O’Malley pushed the City of Baltimore to use CitiStat, a performance-measurement data and management system that allows city officials to maintain statistics on crime trends to condition of potholes. This system aids in better evaluation of policies and procedures with accountability and efficiency in terms of time and money. In its first year, CitiStat saved the city \$13.2 million.
There are several sources of innovation. According to the Peter F. Drucker the general sources of innovations are different changes in industry structure, in market structure, in local and global demographics, in human perception, mood and meaning, in the amount of already available scientific knowledge, etc. When an innovative idea requires a better business model, or radically redesigns the delivery of value to focus on the customer, a real-world experimentation approach increases the chances of market success. Potentially, innovative business models and customer experiences can’t be tested through traditional market research methods. Programs of organizational innovation are typically tightly linked to organizational goals and objectives, the business plan, and to market competitive positioning. One driver for innovation programs in corporations is to achieve growth objectives. Once innovation occurs, innovations may be spread from the innovator to other individuals and groups. This process can be described as using the “s-curve” or diffusion curve. This is known as the process of diffusion. | textbooks/socialsci/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/13%3A_Education/13.04%3A_The_Functionalist_Perspective_on_Education/13.4D%3A_Innovation.txt |
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