Inequalities of Class,

Gender, and Ethnicity

CLASS
 Class
• Usually used to describe level of economic wealth
– Although sometimes it is cultural (high class / low class)
• 2 ways of describing class:
• 1) Durkheimian
– Different levels of wealth along a continuum
– Inequalities were natural
• 2) Marxian
– Two distinct categories
– Class is ones relationship to the “means of production”
– Inequalities were based on exploitation and subjugation
• Proletariat (workers)
• Bourgeoisie (owners)
Economic/Class Inequality

• Exists between, within countries, and across countries

• ACROSS COUNTRIES:
World Income Distribution
 World Wealth Distribution

(World Economic Forum, 2017)

42 richest people in the world own half the wealth in the

world (Oxfam, 2018)
8 men own more than the poorest half of the worlds
population (Oxfam 2018)
82% of new wealth in 2017 went to richest 1%. Enough
to end extreme poverty seven times over (Oxfam, 2018)
Income Share of richest 10%:
https://wid.world/world/#sptinc_p90p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO/last/eu/k/p/ye
arly/s/false/24.339999999999996/80/curve/false/country
Comparative Economic Inequality Between
Societies

• Wealth:
– USA: Wealthiest 20% own 85% of the wealth – 2016
– World: Wealthiest 10% own 85% of the wealth - 2016
 Inequality WITHIN Societies
• Gini Coefficient: ranked 0-1; 0 = perfect equality; 1 = perfect inequality

Trade-off between inequality and national income?

No. Lux is very equal; Mex is not; OECD countries
(wealthiest) are more equal than the poorest
Income and Wealth Inequality in Canada

• Canada: top 20% earn 43% of income

• Bottom 20% earn 5.2%
• In the last 30 years, the income share of the
wealthiest 1% increased by 75%
• The share of the poorest 20% fell by 20%
• WEALTH: top 20% hold 69% of net worth
• WEALTH: Bottom 60% own 11%
US Study on Wealth:
Intergenerational Income Elasticity
(The correlation between parents and children's’ income)
Increases with inequality
 continuum
• In many ways class, gender, and race all represent arbitrary
categorizations along a continuum.
• E.g: marks are arbitrary categorizations:
• F=50 and below; D=50-60; C=60-70; B=70-80; A=80-90; A+ = 90-
100
• F= below 60; D=60-70; C=70-80; B=80-90; A=90-100
• Or why not have B=76.35768 – 82.777777?
• These are socially constructed categories
• Take first example. What if your mark is 79? Are you in the same
grade class as someone with 80%; 71%
• So are classes, races, ethnicities, even genders
 Race / Ethnicity

• Race: based on physical difference

• Ethnicity: Based on cultural identity
• Both are socially constructed categories arbitrarily dividing humans
along a continuum
 Race

• Remember our example of grades: 79%=B; 80%=A;

71%=B; race is like that
• Some say races: All derived from Negroid (‘black’); Caucasoid (‘white’);
Mongoloid (‘yellow’)

• BUT: The Human Genome Project has shown only 15% of genetic
variation to occur between ‘races’ (85% within ‘races’)

• i.e. “There could be more genetic difference between two randomly

selected Cambodians than between a Cambodian and Norwegian” (p.
59).

• But, belief = sociological significance

Race Continuum
Ethnicity
Ethnic Inequality US
Ethnicity & Inequality Toronto
 Racism / Ethnocentrism

• Racism: the belief that inherent different traits in human

racial groups justify discrimination

• Ethnic discrimination: discriminating due to ethnicity

• Ethnocentrism: making value judgments about another

culture from perspectives of one's own cultural system
Dichotomous Sex Categories
Dichotomous
Male Female
 Continuous
Male Female
 Sex a cultural categorization of diverse
human physiology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAUDKEI4
QKI
Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling has proposed that we
replace our two-sex system with a five-sex
system:
1. Males
2. Females,
3. Herms ("true" hermaphrodites)
4. Merms (male "pseudohermaphrodites")
5. Ferms (female "pseudohermaphrodites")
 Gender
• Gender: A set of shared cultural understandings of how men,
women, girls, and boys should look and act.

• Gender roles: The patterns of behaviour that a society expects

of males and females and that all members of society learn, to a
greater or lesser extent, as part of the socialization process.

• Gender socialization: The process by which people learn their

culturally prescribed gender roles
 Gender Biological Determinists
• Structural Functionalists

• Gender roles are natural and related to physical differences

• Men are naturally more aggressive, violent, and physically suited

to physical tasks – being the provider.

• Women, since they give birth, are more nurturing – the caregiver.
 •
But …
Women and Violence:
• Women commit the majority of child homicides in the U.S.
• Women commit the majority of physical child abuse in the U.S.
• Women commit about 25% of the child sexual abuse in the U.S.
• Women are primarily responsible for infanticide.
• In Canada 7% of women have been abused by former partners;
Men: 6%

Aileen
Wuornos
 Gender Inequality
• Gender Income Gap – difference between male and female
full-time earnings:
– Expressed as a percentage of male earnings
• Canada: 21% (33rd in the world)
• USA: 23%
• World: 15.6%
• Africa: 23.2%
• Asia: 21.2%
• Oceana: 13%
• Mexico: 15.5%
• Europe: 14.5%
 You Throw Like a Girl

• A culture of gender discrimination?

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWY
DTs
 Ethnocentrism and Gender
• https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DYBD3SM
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DXYJ5S3