Baca zinn ch05-lecture

Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458

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Diversity in Families, Ninth EditionMaxine Baca Zinn • D. Stanley Eitzen • Barbara Wells

Diversity In Families

Chapter FiveClass, Race, and Gender

NINTH EDITION




Chapter Five Overview

• Structured Inequalities: - This chapter examines how different

family arrangements are related to these social inequalities:

Class Race Gender




Structured Inequalities

• Class, race and gender are macrostructural systems that profoundly affect microstructural family worlds.

• Other conditions also produce inequalities such as age, family characteristics and place of residence, however class, race and gender are most important.










Structured Inequalities:

• They are forms of stratification. • They influence family life through

distribution of social resources and opportunities.

• They are relational systems of power and subordination.

• They are interconnected systems of inequality.

• They influence families, yet family can be a place to resist inequality.




Social Stratification

• Social Stratification refers to structured inequality. Inequalities are not caused by biological, cultural or lifestyle differences, but, of course, class, race and gender also refer to individual characteristics.

• They are built into society’s institutions.

• Groups are socially defined.

• Social Stratification rests on group-based inequalities.




Life Chances

• Life Chances refers to the chances an individual has throughout his or her life cycle to live and experience the good things in life.

• Social stratification systems also place individuals and families in different social locations.

• Different social locations produce different family dynamics and diverse family arrangements.




Life Chances

• Class, race and gender are structures of power as well as systems that distribute social resources.

• These power relationships structure the experiences of all families in different ways.

• Different family forms in society are interdependent.




Matrix of Domination

• All individuals and families exist in a “matrix of domination” (Collins 2000).

• These interconnections have several important implications.- People experience race, class and gender

differently depending on their location in these structures.

- These systems of inequality create an imbalance of power within families as well as between families.




Class

• Persons occupying the same relative economic rank form a social class. Occupation is the most frequently used indicator of class.







Cultural Explanations of Class

• Each class has values, attitudes, and motives that are unique.

• Comparisons between the classes turn out to be deficit accounts of lower-status families.

• Cultural explanations obscure the social and material realities of class.




Structural Explanations of Class

• Examine the ways in which social class shapes the networks of relationships between families, individuals, and the institutions.

• Occupations are a key part of the class structure.

• Classes are power relationships, involving domination and subordination.

• There are 5 categories of families




Classes of Families

• Families of Poverty – With the high rate of unemployment and limited social opportunities, poor families must do whatever it takes to survive.

• Blue-Collar Families – Largest single group of working families in the U.S.

• Middle-Class Families – Today, many families are sustained only by economic contribution of the wives.

• Professional Families – Typically merge spheres of work and family.

• Wealthy Families – Their network of influence in the global economy and their ability to generate additional resources is what distinguishes the elite from the rest of society.




Race

• Scientifically race does not exist.

• Race is only a social reality not a biological reality.

• Race in the social context exists as a category that serves as a basis for differential distribution of power, privilege, and prestige.







Structural Inequalities and Racial-Ethnic Families

• Racial stratification produces different opportunity structures that shape families in a variety of ways.

• Racism results in limited economic resources and inferior living conditions for many racial-ethnic families.







African American Families

• Social, demographic, and economic factors underlie the lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates of Blacks.

• Blacks are more likely than whites to reside in extended family households.




Figure 5.2U.S. Poverty Rates by Race and Ethnicity, 1960-2005

Source: DeNavas-Walt, Carmen, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports P60-235, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007, U.S. Government Printing Office,

Washington, DC, 2008, pp. 44–48.




Latino Families

• Poverty rates for Hispanics have risen alarmingly in the past decade.

• Familism refers to an obligation and orientation to one's nuclear and extended families.

• People of color have acclimated to difficult circumstances by adapting their household structures.







Gender

• Gender is the patterning of difference and domination through socially constructed distinctions between women and men. Gender, like race and class, is a basic organizing principle of society.




Two ways of Thinking About Gender

• 1.) Gender Roles Approach: - Men fill breadwinning roles outside the

family, while women fill the domestic roles inside the families.

- This perspective ignores what is most important about roles – that they are unequal in power, resources, and prestige.




Two ways of Thinking About Gender

• 2.) The Family as a Gendered Institution: - The gendered institution perspective

holds that gender is a factor in the assumptions, practices, and power dynamics of U.S. institutions.

- How women and men interact and what they do every day in families is essential in reproducing gender.




Patriarchy

• Patriarchy is a social organization where men dominate women.

• Patriarchy is interpersonal and structural; private and public.

• Private patriarchy refers to male domination over women in interpersonal relationships.

• Public patriarchy refers to men’s domination over women in the larger institutions of society.




Patriarchy

• The US can be defined as a capitalist patriarchy. Capitalism and patriarchy are closely related.

• Men and women do different work in the labor force and in the family and they have different resources.

• Structured gender inequality works with other inequalities such as race, class and sexuality.

• These inequalities also work together to produce differences among women and men.




Differences Among Groups

• Men are expected to act in a masculine fashion or they are sanctioned socially for “being gay”.

• Historic shifts in social forces continue to increase women’s labor force participation and change many gender norms.

• However, men in general, tend to gain power at the expense of women.




Domestic Life

• The domestic division of labor can limit women’s occupational activities.

• Women are often burdened with doing most of the household work which leaves little time or energy for the pursuit of a career.




Agency within Constraint

• Women may be subordinate in many ways, but they are not passive victims of patriarchy.

• Women’s resistance can take many forms from subtle to active and defiant.

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