Mantsios uses statistical evidence, data, and multiple examples (myth and reality) in the article to explain these class divisions. With the fact that class standings determine the outcome of life chances, there are also issues of race and gender that corresponds into class. In society today, sexism and racism still exists, and no matter what position of class women and members of minorities are in, institutional forces will hold them down precisely because of their gender or race. This makes the chances of being poor in America for women and minorities much higher. White males have a much higher chance of not being poor rather than white females and other races.
It states that the goal in life is to achieve the “American dream”, such as being financially successful. This is seen throughout Compelled to Crime. One of the biggest conflicts for the African American battered women faced was wanting a “normal life” Since this goal was not being met the African American battered women were strained, and to get rid of this strain, they had to use one of his modes of adaption. These modes of adaption consist of, conformity, innovation, ritualism, and retreatism. At first the African American battered women used the mode innovation, they tried to work their goal into the lives of their new husbands.
Marxist theories state that inequality is not a female issue, but a class one, for they note that middle class women are often better off than working class men. This point seems futile; can inequality not be a problem of the female and the working class male? Class aside, it is an indisputable fact that by and large, women are affected more harshly by poverty than men, in Pearce’s research into poverty in the United States, she found that two thirds of the poor who were over 16 were women. Poverty is rapidly becoming a female problem. Marxists however claim that we should focus on the eradication of capitalism, because then gender disparities will swiftly follow.
She also talks about how categories such as gender, race and class are not “free standing distinct systems” but instead “mutually constructing” intersecting systems, which doesn’t play much to her favor since she is a black female. Being that our society is a patriarchy (male dominated) and has been for so long, (women started to get the right to vote in the US in the year of 1920) it may seem odd or even hard when people have to answer up to a woman in charge; because we are just simply not use to it. In Patricia Hill Collins’s article she makes it seem that poverty and low economic opportunities seem inevitable towards black women: “Black men’s lower income meant that the majority of Black women could not marry wealth nor could their mixed-race children inherit it”. It truly seem like an ongoing process since, even their children have to start from
Mainly African American men suffer with such cases as the right to vote when considered a convicted felon. I think the glass escalator effect would prove to be a consideration for men in such positions as child care, teaching, and even parenting in some cases. In these positions a woman is assumedly more able to handle these positions as opposed to a man, and in many cases the profession is dominated by women. Glass ceiling is a suffrage by the males and females of this ethnic group based on the fact that a woman may not move up based on the fact she is a woman. Take for instance the presidency of the United States of America.
Evening Things Out Affirmative action in the eyes of some can be considered to be the compromise for reparations. To others it can be looked at as an opportunity for women to be looked at as equals in comparison to their male colleagues. But those who don’t fall into either of those categories look at affirmative action as reverse discrimination or racism. There is an argument that there is truth in all of those statements, but it is more prevalent in the first two than the latter. Minorities were never given the appropriate chance they deserve, and women still can’t get the respect they deserve in the workplace.
Men are paid higher salaries than women. Women cannot walk freely in the streets. These are some of the examples which show that men are still reining the world. The case of male dominance is worst in the third world countries where people are poor and illiterate. I also have experienced many incidents in which I have been neglected just because I am a girl.
However, the way these writers define this public drastically contrasts with the views of writer Lillian Bowie, Director of Economic Partnerships and Development. While the purpose of Jones and Muhammad’s article was to dissolve the stereotypical views society has of black women, and inform the public of all other positive definitions they embody, Bowie chooses instead to focus on how African American women are becoming more and more educated, yet still struggle with satisfactory pay in the workforce and the opportunity to have more professional type jobs. Bowie notes in her article “The Economic Status of Black Women in America”, that despite the fact that black women’s “educational attainment” have risen more rapidly than those of their white counter parts, they are still “under-represented in management-level and professional positions and face significant barriers in the transition from low-wage jobs to professional
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Affirmative action is a controversial and often misunderstood policy. It is a program whose origin the late 1960s was based upon the historic societal disadvantages shared by blacks and other minorities and the need to rectify disparities between those groups and whites. Over time it has come to embrace women, in most of the ways that it has benefited other minorities. When it was first introduced it attracted little opposition. The country was just emerging from Jim Crow period, an era of racial segregation and state-supported discrimination against African Americans.
Mostly they concentrate on who gets what and why through the lens of why women get what and who sets the agenda. The feminist theoretical perspective focuses on the differential treatment of men and women as well as other inequalities (Witt & Hermiston, 2010, p.14). This is quite evident in the discrepancy among the poverty rates between men and women. “Feminist theorists have attributed higher rates of female poverty to factors such as the lack of affordable child care and sex discrimination in the labour market (Witt & Hermiston, 2010, p. 228)”. Feminists also attribute the feminization of poverty to women's vulnerability brought about by the patriarchal, sexist, and gender-biased nature of Western society, which does not value protecting women's rights and