social inequality: race, gender, and social mobility in Canada

studying inequality

• all societies exhibit systematic inequalities that differentiate people based on their membership in some social category

• like all other observed patterns in sociology, in most cases patterned inequalities are statistical regularities, not absolute laws

  • the presence of exceptions does not negate the empirical reality of the pattern

• when studying inequality, the first question we want to ask ourselves is: inequality in regard to what? what is unequally distributed?

• things that differentiate people in their membership

• things are incredibly different from one society to the next

social inequality: possible dependent variables

• there are all kinds of material and social resources that exhibit pattered inequalities

  • wealth, access to material resources

    • income inequality, wealth inequality, access to housing, food security → things that people use wealth to obtain

    • the social theorist Pierre Bourdieu refers to these inequalities with the phrase “proximity to necessity”

  • safety

    • freedom from violence, freedom from state persecution

  • access to education → social resource that is unequal

  • health outcomes

    • mortality rates, likelihood of good outcomes after a health emergency, chronic health concerns → who most likely have a family doctor

  • social recognition

    • the ability to be included in the public sphere as one’s authentic self

      • can you show up as your authentic self?

social inequality: independent variables

• class

• gender

• race

• ethnicity

• nationality

• immigration status

• disability status

• sexuality

3% of population lives unsheltered → various factors have increased risked

• native

• LGBTQ+

• non-white

• immigrant

exhibit pattern inequalities

intersectionality

• in sociology, we often talk various demographic variables like race, gender, immigration status, etc.

• these variables can be isolated in a statistic model, but they are never isolated in experience

• intersectionality: intersecting identities are often associated with specific experiences of social inequality

inequality in lived experience

• are the disadvantages associated with group membership additive, or are there interaction effects?

  • what the effect of being a women and racialized at the same time

race and social inequality in Canada

• race is a variable that exhibits patterned inequality in Canada

  • wealth and income

  • safety, victimization and access to police protection

  • access to education

  • health outcomes, including life expectancy

  • social recognition

race

physical difference

ethnicity

shared culture (language, religion, material culture/ traditions)

nationality

country of original citizenship

racialization

the processes through which physical differences (i.e skin colour) gets signified as a fundamental category

observing race and social inequality

• the sociological study of race and inequality can address this relationship at each of the level of analysis: macro, meso, and micro

• what does an investigation of the relation between race and inequality look like if one is interested in the macro-level o analysis?

racial minorities in Canadian society (2016 census)

• macro level

• % of the racialized population (nonwhite people)

labour market participation, by race

• whether or not someone has a job or not

income

• white women and men are set as the reference category

• income disadvantage to everyone who is not white

immigration status effects

the subjective experience of racialization

• the sociological study of race and inequality can address this relationship at each level of analysis: macro, meso, and micro

• what does an investigation of the relationship between race and inequality look like if one is interested in the micro-level of analysis?

  • try to flesh out individual interactions responsible for macro

Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk

• black Americans experience double-consciousness → unique experiences of the self where one understands you live in a dominant culture that has expectations that surround you

• consciousness of one’s self; one’s own self-understanding

• consciousness of how one is perceived, both by white individuals and by the dominant white culture more generally

The Souls of Black Folks

(p. 127) Black Americans are “born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world- a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world”

• veil → obscures the face, can’t see the face from the outside

• race → race obscures you

• people see him first as black (race) before him as Du Bois

the veil

• Du Boi’s concept of the veil describes the inability of escaping racial categorization for non-whites

• Barak Obama

  • first black president of U.S

  • veil → this is always the way he is perceived

• Justin Trudeau

  • never hear “Justin Trudeau, the 41st white president”

  • his whiteness does not get in the way

• Asians are good at math → not bad to be good at math, positive dominant culture

integrating macro- and micro-level observations: race and upward social mobility

income quintiles

upward mobility in Canadian society

• linear relationship of income of parents with having high income as an adult

• probability of upward mobility (top 20%)

upward mobility in Canadian society - findings show that the correlation between a child’s income rank as an adult and their parents’ income ran has been on an increasing trend

• probability of just getting in middle 2, 3, 4

• what your parents make increasingly predicts your income as an adult

education

• while the relationship between post-secondary education and upward mobility is decreasing in Canada, education remains the single most important predictor of upward mobility

  • getting a post-secondary education is by no means a guarantee of upward mobility

  • for most upward mobile individuals, education is an essential component for upward mobility

• observe pattern

  • people with more connections have better job opportunity → positive employment outcomes

    • ADVICE → number of people that are networking (eventually gets dilutes)

• university degree → increase income → increase number of people attending university

• all in Ray are in the bottom quintile

James (2019): “adapting, disrupting, and resisting” Canadian journal of sociology

• Study of Black middle school students in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area), in grades 6-8

• Qualitative data gathered via focus groups

  • group qualitative interview, multiple research participants conversing with each other

• Quantitative observations:

  • Black students have lower academic performance than their white peers

  • Black students are among the least likely to attend a 4-year degree program

  • 50% of Black students who enroll in a 4-year degree program will not graduate → going into debt for a program you didn’t or did complete

• “Most schools have embraced the pervasive neoliberal discourse of individualism and merit, but in reality, the educational achievements or successes of Black youth do not depend solely on hard work, commitment, and persistence.”

  • very similar to a connection Ray makes → flow of education → commitment and discipline → but there are there factors not at individual level that affect

• The classroom is not the same environment for Black students as it is for other students

James 2019: Double consciousness in public school

Cano and Hofmeister (2023) the intergenerational transmission (ideas) of gender

• quantitative study

• study of heterosexual families with children in Australia

• children born between March 1999-February 2000

• representative sample, N = 2796 children

  • for each child, both mother and father completed surveys

• longitudinal survey data: the same people were surveyed 6 times, over the curse of 10 years (children ages 4-14)

  • dependent variable → what are children thinking about with relation to gender

dependent variable” gender-role attitudes

• How strongly do you agree with the following statements:

  • a. It is better for the family if the husband is the principle breadwinner outside the home and the wife has primary responsibility for the home and children

  • b. If both, husband and wife, work, they should share equally in the household and childcare

  • c. Ideally, there should be as many women as men in important positions in government and business

• all are Likert questions

• At age 14, children answered each of these questions by responding to a 5- point Likert scale (strongly agree-strongly disagree)

• Scores for all three questions were averaged

• taken average of scores

independent variables

• parenting style (warm/ sensitive vs. authoritative)

• time spent doing childcare (ratio level variable)

• time spent doing unpaid housework

  • ratio level

  • hours per week

  • unpaid domestic tasks

• measured these variables for both fathers and mothers (6 independent variables in total)

  • warm mother, authoritative father

  • aut. mother, warm father

  • aut. mother, aut father

  • warm mother, warm father

• what’ the child exposed to at different development stages

• traditional attitudes —————————————————— egalitarian attitudes

results: fathers’ influence on their children’s gender-role attitudes

• Father’s time spent on childcare is associated with more egalitarian gender role attitudes at age 14

  • Effect holds even when the gender role attitudes of the father and mother are introduced as variables (although the inclusion of these variables decreases the effect size)

  • Implicit vs explicit socialization!

• Father’s time spent on unpaid household labour when children are young is associated with more egalitarian attitudes about gender roles at age 14

  • Largest effect size

• Father’s parenting style (warm vs. authoritative) had no effect on gender role attitudes

• more time spent witnessing dad vacuum, clean, cook increases egalitarian attitude in children → less traditional

• just doing childcare shifts the attitude of children towards egalitarian attitudes

results: mothers’ influence on their children’s gender role attitudes

• Mothers’ time spent on childcare had no effect on children’s gender role attitudes (direct care)

• Mothers’ time spent on housework had a negative effect on gender role attitudes (opposite effect as dad)

• Mothers’ parenting style had the largest effect on gender role attitudes, which children raised by more warm/sensitive mothers having more egalitarian gender role attitudes than children raised by authoritative mothers (regardless of father being aut. or arm)

  • Largest effect size