Social Inequality

Topic overview

• the ontology of social categorization

• institutional discrimination

• intersectionality

Readings

Brym, Chapter 8, p. 178 – 189

AND

Brym, Chapter 7, p. 140 – 152

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, 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 regards to what?

Social inequality: possible dependent variables

• There are all kinds of material and social resources that exhibit patterned inequalities

  • Wealth, access to material resources

    • Income inequality, wealth in equality, access to housing, food security

    • The social theorist Pierre Bourdieu refers to these inequalities with the phrase “proximity to necessity” how close are you to experience a moment of being hungry or not be able to eat, if an individual is at risk of going hungry are said to be proximate to necessity

• Safety

  • Freedom from violence, freedom from state persecution

• Access to education what were the barriers if any to get access to education

• Health outcomes

  • Mortality rates, likelihood of good outcomes after a health emergency, chronic health concerns earn $20,000 less than someone, live 10 years earlier than someone else

• Social recognition

  • The ability to be included in the public sphere as one’s authentic self does the culture in which you live anticipate you?

Social inequality: independent variables

• Class

• Gender predict the likely social resources they have access to

• Race

• Ethnicity

• Nationality

• Immigration status

• Disability status

• Sexuality

using these variables to explain particular kinds of inequalities

Intersectionality

• In sociology, we often talk of 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 particular experiences of social inequality

Inequality in lived experience

• Are the disadvantages associated with group membership additive, or are there interaction effects? adds privileged and disadvantage identities (ex. white women suffer from gender bias and men of colour from racial bias, however their experience would differ from someone who is a woman of colour considering the WOC would experience both)

y-axis: income
x-axis: gender

men has no relationship between gender and income

Race and Social Inequality

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

KEY TERMS

• Race: physical difference skin colour, some physical difference

• Ethnicity: shared culture (language, religion, material culture / traditions) same race different ethnicity, two white individual one from France one from America

• Nationality: country of original citizenship

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

Observing race & social inequality

• The sociological study of race and inequality can address this relationship at each of the levels of analysis: macro, mezzo, and micro

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

Racial makeup of Canadian society (2016 census)

visible minority - two or more categories

Labour market participation, by race

Income

Immigration status effects

The subjective experience of racialization

• The sociological study of race and inequality can address this relationship at each of the levels of analysis: macro, mezzo, and micro think about the dynamics in the micro that produce observations in the macro level

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

Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk

• Black Americans experience double-consciousness the condition of living as a racialize person in a culture dominated in whiteness, experience of living with these two contradictory views

• 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

someone who is non-white has a different perspective how other people view them

The Souls of Black Folk

(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.” metaphorical object - veil, this is how race operates where it obstructs you can’t be seen as a individual

The veil

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

barack obama (black person) became the president of the united states however his case the ‘veil’ was always on him “first black president”. obama won’t escape the comments about his race, always going to view as someone individual who occupies a certain race (black)

positive stereotypes - asian who is good at math vs asian who is not good at math, different reactions (people will be surprised if you aren’t good at math)

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

Income quintiles

quintiles - splitting variables

Upward mobility in Canadian society

“findings show that the correlation between a child’s income rank as an adult and their parents’ income rank has been on an increasing trend” (Statistics Canada, 2021)

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 upwardly mobile individuals, education is an essential component for upward mobility

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 of people in an interview setting

• 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 enrol in a 4-year degree program will not graduate

• “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.” experience is different between black vs white individuals

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

James (2019): Double-consciousness in public school

Web of Stereotypes by teachers and non-black peers:

• More interested in sports (especially basketball) than academics disinterest in academic performance

• More disruptive and disrespectful than peers engaging in the same behaviour with white students however when a teacher is intervening they target the black students and punish them harsher (association to criminality)

• Lack of academic discipline

• Criminality behaviour might interpreted as criminal

conformation to stereotype - not given a fair shot so why bother? → little motivation to achieve academic

rejection stereotype - attitude of ‘nothing to prove’, put in effort the way they put effort

over-perform to combat - adopting to the ‘game is fixed against me’ but i am determine to win (however they will be seen as an example of why we should we think things are fair)

Gender and Social Inequality

Patriarchy

• Describes gender-based inequality

  • Political inequality and exclusion

  • Economic inequality in regard to women’s income, labour

    • Compulsory domesticity

  • Sexual violence

• Gayatri Spivak, post-colonial feminist theorist: The inequality that exists “from the bottom to the top” meaning that it doesn’t matter what area of social life there’s going to be gender-based inequality

Gender and economic inequality

• Historically, women were excluded from many sectors of the paid labour force

• However, since the mid 20th century, women’s participation in full time employment has risen every year other than 2020 (which also showed a reduction in full time employment for men)

• Despite women’s increasing representation in full time employment, gender-based economic inequality is still evident in Canadian society despite there is an increase of occupation availability there is still a problem about their income

• Occupational sex segregation: women are concentrated in lower income professions (daycare workers, domestic service providers, etc.)

• Vertical occupational sex segregation: within every occupation (including high income professions), women are clustered in the lower income earning sectors of the occupation

Gender inequality at home

• Despite increased labour market participation, women continue to perform the majority of unpaid labour in the home

• Childcare, cooking, cleaning: labour that is necessary to achieve daily social reproduction

• Women are responsible for performing the majority of this labour, both when it is unpaid (i.e. in the context of a family) and as low- wage, low-prestige, often precarious employees

OEDC Gender Institutions and Development Database, 2019

Cano & Hofmeister (2023) The intergenerational transmission of gender

empirical research

• Study of heterosexual families with children in Australia same household

• Children born between March 1999-February 2000

• Representative sample, N = 2796 children

  • For each child, both the mother and father completed surveys

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

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

  strongly disagree - most egalitarian, strongly agree - most traditional

  (b) If both, husband and wife, work, they should share equally in the household and childcare
  strongly disagree - most traditional, strongly agree - most egalitarian

  (c)  Ideally, there should be as many women as men in important positions in government and business
  strongly disagree - most traditional, strongly agree - most egalitarian

• 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 (with the scores for (a) reverse- coded) → Children’s gender-role attitudes

Independent variables

• parenting style (warm/sensitive vs. authoritative)

• Time spent doing childcare

• Time spent doing unpaid housework

• Measured these variables for both fathers + mothers

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 households 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

dad
increase child time = child’s attitude are more egalitarian
increase housework = child’s attitude are more egalitarian

Results: Mothers’ influence on their children’s gender role attitudes

• Mothers’ time spent on childcare had no effect on children’s gender role attitudes whether how many hours spent on kids there is no affect

• Mothers’ time spent on housework had a negative effect on gender role attitudes more time spent on housework chores = less egalitarian

• 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

  • Largest effect size