A Discussion Of Class, Gender, And Feminism Essay

One’s identity has the ability to play a central role in one’s schooling experience and in return, affect the way they perceive the world around them. Growing up in an Asian household located in a predominately Asian American neighborhood located in the San Gabriel Valley, I always identified myself strongly to my race and took pride in being a first generation Asian American child. Race has definitely affected my schooling experience in many different ways, both positively and negatively. In addition, there were a variety of other aspects such as stereotypical gender roles and socioeconomic class status which factored into the way I learned in the U.S. education system. In this paper, I will examine how race, class, and gender played a big role throughout my schooling experience.

As individuals, we are all given assigned aspects that define us. Race, gender, and social class are just a few of the characteristics that make us who we are. We also choose to take on certain aspects that reflect our own interests such as careers, fashion, and fandom. When our chosen and assigned aspects come together, our own identity is formed. These parts eventually impact and affect each other with the idea of intersection. The interconnection of being a woman and belonging to a certain career cross and act on each other in ways that are mostly negative. Many women find being successful in their careers very difficult especially women who are based into a male dominated industry.

Last class we watched an informative documentary named “People like Us, Social Class in America”. America is known to be a country defined by class. Throughout the movie it showed different opinions on what class was based on by different people and the answers varied from looks, house size, career choice, race, manners, upbringing, and education. As we move through life, most times we remove ourselves from different people not in our class to then live amongst those who share similar backgrounds and who we are most comfortable with. As stated, “if there is class, there is an inequality one cannot explain and it perpetuates itself”. Revealing class can expose hope, fears, prejudice and a myriad of different emotions that we may not all be comfortable speaking about. I feel as if part two and part three were most applicable to myself because they are something that I have experienced both directly and indirectly.

Gender refers to the socially constructed categories of feminine and masculine. It is one of the major factors in social difference and inequality in today’s society. Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals based on their gender. It arises from differences in socially constructed gender roles. Using a paragraph based approach I intend to individually analyse various aspects of gender differences referencing to the theory of socialisation and also making links to the works of Marx, Durkham and Goffman. My essay will cover different aspects of gender inequalities still present in today’s contemporary society.

Throughout this course, we have discussed how the differences in the social construction of gender, race, class, and sexuality have led to discrimination and inequality of those classified under a variety of these categories. Through understanding the significance of these social constructs on society it becomes apparent the intersectionality they have when it comes to understanding why certain groups may face discrimination or inequality. This paper examines gender inequality and how the social construction of gender makes it difficult for the pursuit of equality amongst genders.

Society has always needed to take a certain initiative; to put an halt or at least tone down a certain persisting enduring. An example of such is the imbalance in power. For long since, into the very depths of history, there has been a issue in power distribution. This is true for numerous civilizations that date back all the way to the B.C time period. A example, in specific, is the reformation. Classism was too, reflected during the Reformation. The reformation was an instance in time where a man by the name of Martin Luther, proceeded to put forth opposition toward the Catholic ideology. He wished to remove the catholic church, so he organized an organization to take down the church. Whilst the war waged on, it could be noted that some degree of classism was apparent. As said before, classism is a major, recurring issue.

There are many ways humans can recognize differences amongst themselves, some of the most notable are race, religion, gender, and politics. Many people view these issues as barriers in forming relationships. However, there is another main reason for these complications that is usually overlooked, that is socioeconomic status. Socioeconomic class can put many divisions between us, this is largely seen in iconic pieces of literature, which also express many ways to overcome the issue.

In Anderson and Collins’, chapter on “Why race, class, and gender still maters” encourage readers to think about the world in their framework of race, class, and gender. They argued that even though society has change and there is a wide range of diversity; race, class and gender still matters. Anderson and Collins stated, “Race, class, and gender matter because they remain the foundation for system of power and inequality that, despite our nation’s diversity, continue to be among the most significant social facts of peoples lives.” (Anderson and Collins, 2010) When I was a little girl, I never knew that people were classified in to groups such as race, class, gender. I knew there were people that had a different color of skin than

The class inequality has been an issue for quite some time; the levels of this are the elite, middle, and lower class tiers. But even within these three major tiers, there are sub tiers, but mostly within the United States, society tends to rate women within the Middle to Lower class. This is true within the professional world of women, seeing as how they are considered on the weaker, lower class tier, Collins refers to an “outsider-within status” (1986), which “ exists with one is located on the boundary between two groups statuses—one with potential power and the other with little power” (2001). African American women have been affected by this “outsider-within status”, more than their Caucasian counterparts because even though “technically they have membership in a high status group, as black women, they are a part of a group

Social class refers to the system of stratification of the different groups of people in a society. These different forms of classification are, in most instances, based on gender ethnicity and age. Social class makes everyone’s lives extremely different. For example: How long one can expect to live. In a wide range of ways, from success, to one’s health class, social class influences people’s lives (Grusky,2003).

The idea of social inequality dates back since the time of our founding fathers. The mistreatment and unlawful equality and opportunity that these foreigners received became embedded into our history—this endless list includes, just to name a few, the Irish, Chinese, Jews, and most notably the African Americans (Blacks), who became slaves to the American people. Here in the United States, the current social class system is known as the class system, where families are distributed and placed into three different existing class—the upper class (wealthy), middle class (working), and lower class (poor). Since then, improvisations have been worked on into the class system, establishing now roughly six social classes: upper class, new money, middle class, working class, working poor, and poverty level. Social stratification is a widely common topic of debate because there have since been many arguments and debates on this controversial situation of social inequality and how it relates to social class and social mobility. According to Economist Robert Reich, he states that "The probability that a poor child in America will become a poor adult is higher now than it was 30 years ago..." (Reich, par. 5), meaning the given amount of equality, opportunity, and support that these struggle families obtain have gone mainly unnoticed by the government that it has gotten worst. The constant uproar of social inequality and injustice that these middle and lower working class families stem

Throughout our semester together, our Social Issues class has discussed many different aspects of race, class and gender. We have had many opportunities to discuss and share our opinions on different topics and problems we face today. During this course, my outlook on life and other people has changed significantly. The use of projects and papers has further enlightened me to understand the perspective of others. The readings that we have been given each week have proven themselves very beneficial and have assisted greatly in furthering my awareness towards different races, classes and genders.

Sitting in my general biology class today, learning about amazing biological discoveries, my male teacher jokingly said “Did you know there are women in science?” then went on to joke about how these women who had just made an amazing biological discovery even had PhD’s. As he went on to talk about the amazing things these women did, he talked about the discovery like he had for the other ones made by men. If women can make biological discoveries like men can why are they looked at differently in their graduate fields of study. In this essay I will explore the gender issue in education through the lens of feminism by evidence shown in past decades and today. Education was primarily for men while women were not even allowed in some classrooms, while over time this has changed.

In the 21st century, many people believe that we have overcome the obstacle of gender inequality and evolved into a society of fairness and righteousness. As many know, females can be just as proficient and qualified as males at any task. Though some efforts to off-set this gender imbalance is in place, it is still commonly acknowledged that many careers are stated to be a male job such as lawyers, and female jobs such as secretaries. Gender inequality is a visible fact in our society and in this essay, I hypothesize that gender inequality still exists as a result of factors such as post-secondary education differences of the two genders, role of females in families, female objectification, career choice differences of the two genders, and

The concept of gender denotes the distinction between culturally driven and created roles of masculinity and femininity. These specific and normalized attitudes and behaviors transcend and effect how differently men and women live their lives. Based on society’s continual re-enforcement of such gender stereotypes, we see an on-going dilemma of gender inequality. Though some may argue that men experience gender inequality, this seems to exist on a much more invasive level for women. As of recently, the awareness of gender inequality in the workplace has increased. With the fight for equal pay and equal respect, society is already making strides towards the equality of women. With that being said, one aspect of gender inequality that seems