Enriching the Sociological Imagination by Rhonda F. Levine

Author:Rhonda F. Levine [Levine, Rhonda F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317260394
Google: UgpZCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-01-08T03:20:32+00:00

Beyond Women as a Category of Analysis: Class Differences Among Women and their Impact on Poverty

The feminization of poverty perspective focuses mainly on the poverty of women as women. This starting point introduces problems in understanding why some women become poor, while others do not. In this section, I will argue that gender related factors are relevant correlates (not determinants) of poverty only among women whose class location already makes them vulnerable to poverty. If no class differences (in the Marxist sense) are taken into account in the analysis of the feminization of poverty, it does appear as if it were caused primarily by sexism. It is necessary, therefore, to examine the concept of social class and explore its implications for the life chances of women in different social classes.

From the standpoint of Marxist theory, class is a relation between people mediated by their relationship to the means of production. Ownership of means of production, even in a modest scale, gives political and economic control over others, and economic independence. Lack of means of production places workers – male and female – in a dependent situation, vulnerable to the decisions taken by those who, in controlling capital, control their access to the conditions indispensable for their physical and social daily and generational reproduction: employment. Changes in the occupational structure and quantitative and qualitative changes in the demand for labor divide the propertyless class in terms of occupation, income, and education, which are precisely the building blocks with which the average person and most social scientists construct socioeconomic status categories.4 This is the material basis for the common sense division of people into a variety of ‘classes,’ in a ranking that ranges from ‘the poor’ and the ‘lower class’ at the bottom, to the ‘upper class’ at the top, with the ‘working class,’ ‘middle’ and ‘upper-middle class’ in between. This is an empiricist understanding of social class that mystifies the sources of women’s poverty; it is a simple ordering or gradational concept of class, that focuses only on the different power and resources individuals bring to the sexual and economic markets (Ossowski, 1963: 41–57, Weber, 1982: 61–62). It is a central contention in my argument that, if the social class location of women (not their socioeconomic status) is taken into account, it becomes obvious that it is not sex but class that propels some women into poverty.

Capitalist women and petty bourgeois women are not at risk of becoming poor

Being a capitalist or a petty bourgeois women entails, theoretically, having capital of one’s own and, therefore, a source of income independent from marriage or from paid employment. Women who own wealth are unlikely to become poor for gender related factors, though inheritance practices and family accumulation strategies might deny them full control of their property.

Of the top wealth-holder with gross assets of $300,000 or more in 1982, 39.3 percent (1.85 percent of the total female population) were women. Between 1985 and 1986, the proportion of women aged 21 and over in the poverty population rose 1.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.