Baca zinn ch05-lecture

Diversity In Families
NINTH EDITION

Chapter Five
Class, Race, and
Gender

Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Diversity in Families, Ninth Edition
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458
Maxine Baca Zinn • D. Stanley Eitzen • Barbara Wells
All rights reserved.

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 5.2
U.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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