My Life: Gender, Ethnicity, And Socioeconomic Class

Factors of my life such as gender, religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class have shaped me to be the person I am today. Being able to understand the history that is connected to these factors help me to understand the depth at which I am influenced by them. It also is critical to understand how am affected by these factors in my day-to-day life and how they socialize me. The two facets of my life that have influenced me the most are ethnicity and gender and if I had been born into different circumstances, my life would be extremely different from what it is today.
The idea of the sociological imagination came from C. Wright Mills. He theorized that people feel trapped because society could change at any moment and drastically change their

Karl Marx believed that the position of power you were born into directly affects your life chances (Macaluso, 2016). Marx and Engels discuss the differences in power between the bourgeoisie or the ruling-class and the proletarian or the working- class in his essay, The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx & Engels, 1888). He believed that in all economic systems, there was conflict and that conflict often comes from the differences in power. People such as the bourgeoisie who have more power legitimize their position by creating and using values and morals that align with their ideals (Macaluso, 2016). In my life, I find Karl Marx’s conflict theory to be present within the context of my social world in the areas of both heritage and

According to Mills, in order to fully understand the impact my gender had on my life, I must first recognize how gender has influenced women in the past by using the sociological imagination (Mills, 2000). Throughout history, women have been oppressed, but starting in 1920, when women gained the right to vote, they also began to receive more power as well. However, in some areas such as religion, women still have little power. The history of women’s rights and power sets the stage for the dynamics of the social world that I live in, including my position of power as a female within the church. I attend a United Reformed Church and within the church, there are many positions of power. There is the pastor, elders, deacons, ushers, and even a security team, very few of which have women. This is because the area of West Michigan historically has had the majority as conservative people of Dutch ancestry. With the conservative values the Dutch brought, they also brought the idea that men should be the leaders of the church. They back up this idea using the Biblical story of creation. God, who is viewed as a man, created Adam first, and from Adam’s rib, God created Eve and Adam was to rule over Eve. As Marx theorized, this inequality of men and women creates conflict because men use the Bible as a source way of legitimizing their power. The