The Importance Of Social Class

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A successful individual in life will usually be characterized as an intellectual and hard worker, however that may not exactly true. There are multiple jeopardies that come into play when it comes to the amount of upward/downward social mobility one experiences in one 's own life or even your children’s life. Social class is defined by wealth and power and defines where you as a person stands in society, your social status. While there are subtypes, classes are essentially lower, middle or upper class. This is key because the position you hold in society determines the amount of opportunities you and your family can expect to have. The upper class is characterized as having a lot of power and wealth, and this translates into providing their …show more content…

Historically, racial minorities like african americans have typically been restricted to low-paying jobs like factory work, and the slavery and segregation limited the types of jobs they could hold. It’s not simply just african americans, racism affects all racial minorities. Another big concern is age. In the States, laws require employers to not discriminate against workers older than 40 and not make retirement mandatory based on age only, however it should not come as a surprise that older people seeking work may not be as wanted as younger people because some employers view them as less productive than younger workers despite evidence showing that’s not the case. Choosing not to hire a qualified individual simply because they’re old is called ageism. Something similar is called ableism, where employers may choose “normal” people without disabilities instead of those with disabilities. For example, a qualified candidate that’s in a wheelchair may be snubbed of the position for a non-cripple simply because the company doesn’t want to put accommodations in place (even though there’s laws prohibiting this, Title VII of Civil Rights Act) because of the cost to do so. These discriminations are extremely important, because sometimes they’re simply born with these characteristics! Their intragenerational mobility is already limited from the start and may be denied promotions or jobs because of …show more content…

Job ghettos are jobs that typically offer little security, little opportunity to advance and are usually boring/physically taxing. The discrimination towards women got reinforced by the assumption that they would stay home and take care of children and housekeeping. Gender-typing further separated women from jobs that were assumed to be more appropriate to be held by men than women, such as construction work or engineers. These discriminations against women have created a ‘glass ceiling’ for women, which essentially means that there’s been a limit set for them in terms of how successful they can be in society and they’re unable to pass that limit. Role conflicts also affect women more than it does men because there wasn’t any standard integration of work and family yet, men avoided this because they were never thought of being the caregiver in the first place, it was always assumed that the women would do the caregiving. Married women were expected to be employed and care for children, which isn’t always possible (taking care of a sick child while they had to be at work). This also meant that women had multiple roles, creating a role overload. While women reported being happier when they held more than one role, it doesn’t mean that the stress of holding all those different roles won’t get to them. All

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