THEORY - Class Flashcards

Question

FEMINISM - Crisis of femininity

Answer 1

Women constantly have different norms and values that they must follow which all contradict each other. Eg, lead BUT don't be bossy, strive for more than being a housewife BUT be a present mother, call out bad male behaviour BUT don’t complain.

Answer 2

Argues that women are expected to work full time or almost full time alongside fufilling the expressive role too. Denscombe classes the burden as a triple shift adding emotional labour too. Hoshchild classes this as the second shift.

Answer 3

Marxist feminists look on class and gender inequalities as dual systems of oppression, with both being very powerful and independent systems. Marxist feminists often argue that class and gender inequalities reinforce each other and create groups that are doubly oppressed eg, capitalism uses the family to oppress women, and the harmful consequences of the family to women’s lives.

Answer 4

'The amount of unpaid labour performed by women is very large and very profitable to those who own the means of production. To pay women for their work, even at minimum wage scales, would involve a massive redistribution of wealth. At present, the support of the family is a hidden tax on the wage earner – his wage buys the labour power of two people'.

Answer 5

When wives play their traditional role as "takers of shit", they often absorb their husband’s legitimate anger and frustration at their own powerlessness and oppression.

Answer 6

Argues that women enjoy far less social mobility. Ken Robert (2011) supports this idea arguing that many women remain single or lose their husband, and are often led with limited occupational pensions.

Answer 7

Pamela Abbott criticises Goldthorpe’s findings that there is a lot more social mobility because the study ignored women.

Answer 8

Gay Bryant was the first person to use the term "glass ceiling" in print with the publication of "The Working Woman Report" in 1984. The glass ceiling is a metaphor in sociology that refers to the invisible barriers and bias that keep women and minorities from opportunities to advance in the workplace.

Answer 9

Alternative to most classifications of social class because these normally ignore the job of the female (if married) and only take into account the husband’s job. The scale contains a greater range of social classes - EG Class 6 is divided into two: 2

Answer 10

The iron maiden concept of Naomi Wolf recalls how females are bombarded with images of ‘perfect women’ who have flawless skin, ‘perfect bodies’. (eg, the Dove campain). This can have very negative effects upon women because they aspire to look like these women BUT can almost never become them because it is not real! This also links to the contribution of capitalism because it encourages women to participate in the consumer culture of beauty products.

Answer 11

Women are more likely to be a part of the reserve army of labour, meaning that they fill in the lower paid jobs and have a hard time finding full time work while balancing family and work.

Answer 12

Unlike functionalists he does not see inequality as inevitable, however does not envisage a society where it is possible to enforce equality, because it interferes with market forces: most hardworking people should not be stopped from rising to the top). He believes in EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY but not EQUALITY OF OUTCOME (everyone being rewarded equally irrespective of talent or effort or intelligence). Therefore like functionalists, he thinks that some equality is positive because it motivates people to work harder. (Similar to Davis and Moore social stratification).

Answer 13

Identified a new class of people known as the underclass. He argues that they've grown lazy from being on benefits, they just live on the sate. This is due to inadiquate socialization of the lower classes.

Answer 14

He defined the US underclass as the "class of unemplyed, enemployables, and underemployed who are more and more hopelessly set apart from the nation at large and do not share in its life, its ambitions and its achievements".

Answer 15

David Cameron targeted families in the Troubled Families Programme as not just "troubled" but causing "trouble". "Some in the press might call them neihbours from hell", Cameron said. "Whatever yoy call them, we've known for years that a relatively small number of families" are "the source of a large proportion of the problems in society".

Answer 16

Argues that there's been a 'flight from parenting' in which parents from the underclass are neglecting to socialize their children, meaning that NEETS are becoming more and more common.

Answer 17

It is mistaken to assume that capitalist societies based on the free market necesssarily offer infivifuals individuals more freedom then socialist or communist societies which seek to make people equal. (For example, the system of slavery in parts of the USA, black people were denied the same opportunitites as white people and military dictatorships such as chile in the 1980's were all based on free market capitalism but were extreemly opressive in terms of treatment of certain social groups).

Answer 18

Bourdieu would critisize The New Right because the upper classes are more likely to have capital and therefore not everyone has the same opportunity (eg, private schools).

Answer 19

- It tends to either tactically or explicitly blame the worst off in society for their troubles, downplaying and confusing poverty with criminality. - The governments 'Troubled Families Programme' was launched by David Cameron following the 2011 riots as a way of tackling Britains "broken society". The aim to "turn around" the lives of 120,000 of the "worst" families in the UK (defined by poverty, poor housing, lack of work, and disability / mental illness) used intensive interventions led by local councils and social workers.

Answer 20

Young argued that The New Right often take part in "politics of vindictiveness" whereby they 'get back at' the lower classes and ethnic minorities' for changing Britain after the collapse of the industrial revolution and the windrush generation.

Answer 21

Their research found that the greater the inequality, the higher level of negative social indices. Therefore, it is not that fault of individuals in the underclass, it is the system's fault. (Eg, the research in their book 'the spirit level' found that teenage pregnancy will be higher in unequal countries, as well as life expectancy, obesity, homocide, and levels of mental illness).

Answer 22

They carried an ethnographic study on young unemployed people between 1990 and 2000 in East Kelby. What they found directly contradicted the New Right predictions about attitudes of this group. They found the young people were keen to find a job and better themselves, they believed in family values and hard work. They concluded that young people from 'the underclass' need opportunities to escape the social exclusion they face.