In reality Britain is not a meritocracy, this is due to discrimination and labelling. It is a capitalist economy.

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In reality Britain is not a meritocracy, this is due to discrimination and labelling. It is a capitalist economy. The type of stratification system used in Britain is the Class System, which divides society into a hierarchy of unequal social groups based on their occupation this defines whether they are working-class or middle-class. However, the social divisions are not clearly separated.  

The class system is an open society, social mobility is possible across the social hierarchy on the basis of personal achievement, from which you can gain achieved status. However, there are obstacles to social mobility including prejudice, labelling, discrimination, racism and sexism. Lack of Educational achievement can also be an obstacle.  

Conjugal roles are the roles played by a male and a female in a marriage or cohabiting relationship. The inequalities in social class between the working-class and middle-class exist in the conjugal roles played in the family.

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Traditionally the roles played by the male and female were very different. For example the male did the DIY and the ‘manly’ jobs and the female took care of the more domestic jobs like housework and looking after the children. They had segregated conjugal roles. These roles are the gender stereotype of what is expected of us even today.

However, we have seen a shift from segregated conjugal roles to joint conjugal roles where the male and female do similar tasks. This idea of joint conjugal roles is called ‘The Symmetrical Family’ (Young and Willmott).

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