For example, In the Aztec community, gold was sacred because of its colour. It was believed to represent mother earth’s menstruation, which displays that women were also sacred because of their ability to menstruate.
The gender stratification system is kept in place by a variety of forms of social control such as gender role socialisation. This trains people to conform to social expectations about their gender. Parents use gender- based terms when they talk about their children. They dress boys and girls differently and give them different toys etc. This all happens during primary socialisation.
Oakley identified two processes central to the construction of gender identity. These were manipulation and canalisation. Manipulation refers to the ways in which parents encourage or discourage behaviour on the basis of the child’s sex. Canalisation refers to the ways in which parents channel children’s interest into toys and activities that are seen as appropriate for that sex. Both these types of gender reinforcement are very powerful.
Many forms of social control manipulate women via their sexuality.
Some of these forms of control are, physical (through circumcision, chastity belts and foot binding), legal (voting, mortgage, and work laws) and through idealogical beliefs such as, ‘men are stronger’. This statement is obviously not true as women live longer then men and most miscarriages and infant deaths are male. This demonstrates that it is an idealogical statement. Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and Pakistan etc also use these types of beliefs to control women. They believe than a woman is worth half a man.
Gender role expectations also play a part in idealogical social control.
Being feminine is associated with being weak, submissive, hysterical and quiet. These are all seen as negative images. However, masculinity is associated with being strong, rational, logical and in control, which are all positive images. This gives men a positive self image and women a negative self image. This makes women a lot easier to control.
Studies have focused on the different sexual personalities. Males are supposed to be promiscuous predators, whereas females are supposed to be passive and interested in love more than sex.
Gender identity carries risks because of this as women may be labelled a ‘slag’ if they seem to behave similarly to men. Females conform to protect their reputation. Their social identity is dependant upon being physically attractive to men. It has little to do with being intelligent, it depends upon how women conform to society’s definition of women as sex objects.
However, experiences of man and women vary. Differences depend upon race, age and class. Most accounts of gender socialisation disregard these differences Gender role socialisation assumes that women passively accept the gender identity imposed upon them. It neglects the choice of developing an identity and the fact that many women and men resist conforming to stereotypes.
Society’s major social institutions like the media, education and the family transmit gender stereotypes. Women advertise household products and males do voiceovers as they are seen as more authoritative. Boys are disciplined more heavily at school. Teachers usually ask boys to help them carry things and femininity does not usually go with intelligence. Primary schools have books about heterosexual families and have different things to play with, for example, girls are expected to play in Wendy houses. At home, girls are made to do more domestically. Boys and girls are also given different toys. All these points act as a form of social control, maintaining the gender stratification system.
Our class system also plays a part in stratification. Class is measured in terms of occupation. It involves income, lifestyle, clothes, leisure activities etc.
There are large differentials between middle and working class children, like different fife expectancy and infant mortality. Working class children are, generally, smaller and unhealthier.
Working class, until the late 20th centaury, had a strong sense of loyalty towards each other and their identities and interests were part of their work and the work-based community they lived in. Working class were very sure of their social class position and all aspects of life were a product of their working class identity.
Economic basis for working class people has now weakened as manual workers now make up less then half of the total work force. They now define themselves through their families and standard of living rather than through their work.
The under class consists of people who are dependant on state benefits like the unemployed, single parents, or those with badly paid or casual jobs. These people are thought to be work shy by some people. However most people in the underclass are still very aware of the class based issues and they believe that the distribution of wealth, status and power are unfair.
The middle class has 4 types of identity: Professionals (such as doctors and lawyers), managers in private businesses, self-employed owners of small businesses and entrepreneurial groups.
The upper class has had limited research. Their sense of identity is likely to be powerful. The children will grow up learning distinct ways of speaking and with specific values, attitudes and ways of seeing the world. This is known as cultural capital. The upper class practice social closure and is self-recruiting.
These classes affect social control in many ways. Class has an impact of education, health and life chances.
In education the higher classes generally do better than the lower classes. Working class children have stronger regional accents, whereas the upper/ middle class use more intellectual, longer words and sentences. They are said to have elaborated language, as opposed to the working class’ restricted language. Only people who want to maintain their status use elaborated speech. This is to make themselves seem more powerful. Working class children are therefore at a disadvantage in the school system because of these speech codes. They are put in bottom ability groups and told they are stupid, which makes them believe that they are. This is a form of social control as it lowers their self-esteem.
Life chances are your chances to succeed. The higher up the stratification system you are, the better your life chances. For example, the upper class has better health and education as they have more money. These life chances determine where you are in the stratification system.
Life chances also play a large part in the global stratification system. There is an unequal distribution of wealth, status and power over the globe. The countries with westernised, capitalist, industrial and Christian, white domineering groups are highest up.
The countries lower down the stratification system are countries that were once colonised by Britain.
The British did however, invite some of these people in the early 50’s and 60’s to come over to work for us. At this time we were expanding after the war and many of these people were glad to be here due to the NHS and the benefits our country had to offer. These people were very submissive and easily controlled.
These people mainly consisted of 3 non-white ethnic groups:
- Afro-Caribbean (west Indians)
- Asians (from Indian subcontinents i.e. Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshi.)
- African-Asians
Asians consist of 3 main religions, Hindus, Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslims and Sikhs. It is believed that the British purposely fragmented the Asians, during colonisation in order to prevent an uprising against them.
African Asians originated from when the British took Asians over to Africa to administrate for business. This was because they were well educated and wealthy and they came from a stratum above Africans.
Afro- Caribbean people come from the West Indian islands colonised by the French, English and Spanish. The people who originally inhabited the islands were killed by European diseases or were worked to death. After this, slaves were then imported from Africa.
There was already a tradition of slavery in Africa when European nations required slaves. This was however the first time in history when large numbers of slaves had been moved from one continent to another.
Slavery had devastating effects on self-esteem. They were not allowed to marry, practice their own religions or speak their own language. This made them easier to control and prevented rebellion. They were treated like animals.
In recent years, movements like black Muslims and Rastafarianism have evolved the US and Jamaica respectively, to replace their lost identity and self esteem. The black power movement coincided with the black civil rights movement lead by martin Luther king and was designed to give identity to black Americans. Sports and music also helped raise black people’s levels of self-esteem and improved their appearance to the world.
These people started going back to their roots, and rebelled against being forced to fit in with white people, for example by straightening their hair. This caused Afro’s to become popular in the 60’s which boosted black people’s confidence greatly as white people started to take interest in their culture.
An extreme want of identity triggered off the Malcolm X movement. These people changed their names and rejected their slave names. They wanted separatism with black superiority. They adopted a form of Islam and some became quite violent.
All these movements caused massive raises in self-esteem.
A typical example of social control through ethnicity is Jesus. He is always shown as a white person, when in fact he would have had a dark complexion with dark hair. This is because white is seen as good and pure and black comes across as darkness and evil. This is known as xianity. The media also only use white people for adverts and most role models in films and dramas are white. This made black people seem insignificant. This is now changing in modern society.