Gender Inequality In The United States

U.S. society is highly stratified, but many people underestimate the extent of structured inequality in U.S. society for the following reasons: In principle, the law gives equal standing to all. Our culture celebrates individual autonomy and achievement. We tend to interact with people like ourselves. (2006 Alan S. Berger) Over a 25-year period, adult children often end up in the same income bracket as their parents. For example, only 7 percent of those who begin in the bottom quintile reach the top quintile as adults; their story is one of rags to riches. By comparison, a third of the people in their quintile (33 percent) stay at the bottom, where they began. (Mazumdar 2008:11)

Marx believed that social change is the natural order

Feminists have taken Marxist ideas and have developed them into an analysis that places gender inequalities as being as significant, if not more so, as class inequality. Feminists believe that inequality exists because men oppress women as much as because the rich oppress the poor. Marx correctly predicted that the agricultural class, a legacy of preceding feudal system, would become smaller and less relevant to the central conflict of the capitalist order. He said that the rich would get richer as the poor get poorer, and this is known as polarization as the two classes moved away from each other in terms of power and wealth. However, the greatest flaw in his analysis is a failure to foresee the growth of a middle

Unlike Marx’s two-class system, and Weber divided “class” into four categories: propertied upper class, property less intelligentsia (white-collar workers), the petty bourgeoisie, and the manual working class. A propertied class is placed at the top because they own economic power, social status and political influence. A property less intelligent is a professional class. It was placed next because they not only have relatively high social status and some political influence, but also have higher position in the labor market. and ownership of lesser forms of property than propertied class. A petty bourgeoisie was placed third because they have less property ownership, less social status and less political influence. The manual working class was placed the last because of they relatively lack property ownership and lower position in the labor market, and they have lower social status and political influence as