SOCIAL STRATIFICATION: CLASS, STATUS AND POWER

By Peter Worsley

In using the term' stratification' to refer to society, we are using an analogy. In geology,
stratification refers to the way in which layers of rock are arranged one on top of another. Social
stratification, similarly, refers to the division of a population into strata, one on top of
another. However, in contrast to the kind of stratification present in nature, social stratification
has a number of social relationships between the strata. These relationships are characterized by
a sense of superiority and inferiority and can be of many kinds – political, social, economic,
religious etc. This in turn leads to the conflict of interests. Social strata are collectivities of
people who themselves perceive these inequalities, and have their own conceptions of the
stratification system which affect their behaviour. Their class-position, too, affects their
behaviour even though they may not realize it. Social strata are not therefore inert: they tend
to give rise to groups which recruit from the given stratum and which claim to express the
interests of the stratum as a whole, and thus affect the rest of the system. While the rock strata
present in nature remains set or fixed for a very long period of time, stratification systems change
over time and they may do so suddenly or gradually.

Stratification is a means of regulating one’s access to ‘scarce’ goods. These goods are not only
the material goods of consumption, but also the immaterial and the intangible goods such as
prestige. People commonly work hard and spend hard, in order to acquire not just the biological
'necessities of life', but also 'social' necessities (more accurately' wants') which include using
wealth to get power over others and respect from them. This often involves using one's
resources to build up a political following or to maximize one's status.

Class stratification is the dominant form of stratification found in capitalist societies and
communist societies. 'Age-set' societies, feudal 'estate' societies and caste societies, for example,
are quite different systems of stratification from those more familiar to people living in class
societies. Estate and caste societies, for example, distribute their members at birth into different
strata according to one principal criterion - age, descent, rank, etc. and there is little or no
possibility of moving out of that stratum. They also develop explicit theories explaining and
justifying why such arrangements exist. In industrial societies on the other hand - whether
capitalist or communist - however class-ridden or elitist they may be, there are no formal' criteria
of this kind which condemn a person to one particular class for his whole life. Class is thus much
more informally institutionalized.

Peter Worsley compares the kind of stratification present in advanced capitalist and communist
society with the socieites of pre-indutrial times. He looks at those tribal societies of the 'stateless'
type described by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard (1940). These societies lack centralized
administration and judicial institutions. The office of chief may not exist at all, or, if it does,
often carries more ritual than secular power. Nor is succession to office necessarily hereditary.
But though a society may be 'stateless', and lack chiefs (and thus be called an 'acephalous '
(headless) society), it may still be stratified. Australian aboriginal tribes, for example, are
stratified on the basis of age (and sex). In other societies, a whole age-group is initiated so as to
form an 'age-set' together. These age-sets are the major basis of social organization. So although
a society like this is highly stratified and constitutes a 'gerontocracy', in which the older men hold
the decisive authority, every man in his time becomes an elder. He is not fixed for life in a lowly
position. Secondly, he performs exactly the same production roles as his fellows. Consumption-
standards hardly differ either. Finally, there is room for any enterprising person of reasonably
appropriate age to win himself a leading part in the economy, in settling disputes, or in ritual, if
he wants to. To this degree, this kind of society is an 'opportunity' or' open' society whereas ours
is not, contrary to much popular assumption and even much sophisticated social theory about the
'open society'.

Yet though there is change of personnel within the system, the pattern of stratification itself does
not change - the basic determinants remain fixed: those of age and sex. This kind of fixity is even
more evident where a man is allocated to his place in the stratification-system by birth. For
example in the Indian caste system. This caste-system exists at two distinct levels. One is an
India-wide classification into priests, warriors (land-holders), merchants, and the broad mass of
people on the land. The whole Hindu population, and a number ofother groups, are fitted into
these four varna. But these are not the basic units of caste at village level. Here, instead of the
varna, we find a division of the local community called the jati. It is this jati which constitutes
the social reality of caste for individuals in rural Indian society and , there are many thousands of
such groups. The effect is to maintain social distance between the various jatis and to preserve
the hierarchical system of ritual superiority and inferiority intact as a whole. Formally, the caste-
system was absolutely closed, both to individual and group mobility. Nevertheless, whole groups
have successfully improved their caste-position through the process known as 'Sanskritization',
in which a group imitates the customs of a superior jati, via exaggerated observance of the ritual
practices of that group, by taking up 'purer' occupations, by treating jatis of previously equal or
superior status as ritually polluting, and by making demands for precedence over them in
ceremony. A caste is thus much more than an occupational group. It is an extreme example of
what is usually called a status-group, because the term' status' involves not just a position in a
division of labour, but membership of a group marked off from other inferior and superior
groups and accorded different amounts of prestige. A caste is a very closed status-group, but
status-groups can be much more open.

Sex and Gender: Are Women a Class?

The systems of stratification that are brought to our attention are really been systems of male
stratification, though they purport to be about society as a whole. A woman's place in society is
assumed to be simply dependent upon that of her husband or father. Yet many women, in our
society, lead independent lives or contribute significantly to the household. Nor are even 'upper-
class' women free from the dis-privileges involved in being a woman as against being even a
lower class male. Sociologists, it is true, usually do note that women are under-represented,
societally, in the crucial decision-making centres of power and that their social contribution is
also undervalued: both their place in the economy, and their place in the main area of society
where they clearly predominate: the home. Their participation in both spheres is discounted as
marginal, inferior or ancillary.

Male domination of society goes back for most of recorded history: far beyond the comparatively
recent emergence of modern industrial society. Feminists consequently argued that oppression by
males is a deeper, wider and more fundamental exploitation than domination based on control
over the means of production· or control over the apparatus of force. To examine this issue,
therefore, we cannot restrict ourselves to the evidence derived from a handful of Western
industrial societies in the last century or so. We need a much wider comparative sweep and a
longer historical perspective. Sociology, that is, has to draw upon the related disciplines of
anthropology and history.

Nineteenth-century evolutionary theorists believed, as do some contemporary writers of the

Women's Movement, in the historical existence of a bygone 'matriarchal' age when women, not
men, ruled society, or, alternatively, in a former stare of equality between men and women. The
existence of such a matriarchal epoch has been discounted by modern anthropology. But even in
those societies where matriliny is practiced, it is nevertheless men who are the key leaders in
most public affairs. In the economic sphere, even where women's contribution, in the division of
labour between the sexes, has been important _ e.g., in hunting-and-collecting societies, where
they contribute the bulk of the food supply (wild vegetables and fruit) - their role in political::
and religious life was inferior to that of men.

We must reject the common assumption that differences of role and status, as between men and
women, are 'natural' in society, since they derive from innate differences of a biological kind
which are truly natural, i.e., built into our physiques and minds through genetic inheritance. But
it has been culturally elaborated far beyond anything' given' in our biological constitution, for
biological differences of sex have been converted into social differences of gender (though we
loosely continue using the word 'sex') (Barker and Allen, 1976). Yet the social inferiority. of
women as a collectivity over wide periods of historical time is still often' explained' in terms of
genetic inferiority. Women, it is asserted, bear children and are therefore periodically
immobilized; menstruation also hinders their continuous participation in social life; and their
physique is less powerful than that of most men. These physical attributes are held to explain
social inferiority in societies as different from each other as hunting-and collecting societies, on
the one hand, and industrial countries on the other. It is true that one finds the biological process
of menstruation everywhere treated as a condition of 'pollution', in both primitive and in
advanced cultures. But menstruation is not dangerous to men; this is a social construction placed
upon that physical state (reflecting the great importance placed upon birth, and the fear of
anything abnormal). Neither menstruation, or even childbirth, necessarily restricts women in
their physical activities. The intellectual propensities of women have similarly been taken as
'natural', though the' childishness' reported of Victorian women, assumed to be a natural
deficiency, would now be explained by sociologists in terms of their restricted lives, spent
mainly in the company of children and under patriarchal authority, and in terms of their limited
formal education. Explanations of social differences in terms of some universal genetic
endowment are thus abundantly contradicted by the evidence of the great variety of female
behaviours.

There is, however, it should now be apparent, no condition of 'womanhood' in general. Even at
the same period of time, within the same culture, different kinds of women have been treated
differently. A sociological explanation, therefore, has to examine both the institutional
arrangements which determine what women can and cannot do, within a given society, the
changes that take place in them over time, and the ideological notions of the •proper' place of
women that inform these arrangements.

The 'woman question' seemed to have been put on one side after the major suffragette struggles
around the turn of the century, when the solidarity generated in the common struggle for the vote
gave way to an era when women were divided by differing ideas, along lines of social class, as to
how to use that vote. Women, however, continued to suffer important disadvantages, and it was
to these issues that some turned, as women, in the inter-War era. One important area was that of
sexual liberation which was now reaching a newly-literate and educated generation of women.
Since the latter kinds of issues affected women of all classes, offended the sensibilities of the
orthodox, and affected all women in their relations with men, they tended to attract a great deal
of attention. Innovation in these fields, too, was largely pioneered by educated and vocal middle-
class women. While they were beginning, slowly, to break into male middle-class preserves
(schools, offices, universities), working-class women were entering new areas of industrial,
especially tertiary, employment, in vast numbers, and some even joining trade unions. The
problems of women, then, were problems of underprivilege and limited rights, affecting all of
them in some respects. But women did not occupy identical positions in society. According to
their class, they differed in the place they occupied within the domestic economy and in the
extent to which unpaid housework was combined with wage-labour outside the home. Those
involved in both sectors of the dual social division of labour - domesticlabour and wage-Iabour-
were obviously subject to strains unknown to those who remained in the home. But the latter
became increasingly conscious, and resentful, of compulsory domesticity. Such differences
reflected themselves within the women's movements themselves, e.g., within the suffragette
movement, one wing of which was led by women from high society; concerned primarily with
the vote, while the socialist wing were concerned with the general social condition of the mass of
women, the poor of London's East End and the north of the country. In the nineteenth century
working-class women struggled collectively to set limits to the hours of grinding labour, to raise
their wages, and to improve working conditions that left them with no time or energy for their
families. At the same time genteel ladies were struggling for the right and opportunity to break
out of the confines of the home, children and the kitchen and to break into the masculine world
of the professions, higher education and public life Recent sociological theory has attempted to
link the two 'worlds' of women - the world of the home and the world of 'work' - into a single
theoretical structure by showing that they form part of an overall social and economic system.

Thus functionalist theory contrasts industrial society with peasant society, where the family was
both a unit of production and a consumption unit. On the production side, women as well as men
were engaged in agricultural labour. They also contributed to monetary income via petty trade.
Today, by contrast, the family is seen as a unit of consumption only, and the woman's role as the
'non-economic' provision of emotional support for -the rest of the family, and - only indirectly
related to the economy - the socialization of children into attitudes compatible with the demands
of school and future work-roles.

Worsley critiques this theory by arguing that firstly it fails to recognize that there are now over 9
million women at work in Britain and most of these women are married.Secondly, women
earners are not marginal, but economically indispensable in many families. Some two million
women (married; lone mothers with children; single women, many with dependants) are the
chief supporters of their families, one in six of all households. Others contribute importantly to
the joint income of the household. Thirdly, as Marxist theorists have emphasized the
functionalist model also undervalues the female contribution to the domestic economy, treating
this as 'marginal', because the household does not produce commodities sold on the market. But
what goes on inside the household is work, and usually hard work, even if no wage is paid.
Fourthly, the daily; as distinct from the inter-generational, 'reproduction' of the labour-force - the
support of the actual individuals who go out to work - is supplied by the family, which provides
for the physical and mental well-being of its members.

The elimination of gender inequalities is not achieved solely via structural changes at the societal
level, whether in capitalist or communist societies, e.g., by establishing State ownership of the
means of production or Equal Opportunity Commissions. Changes in the law, of course, from the
right to vote or the right to choose one's marriage-partner to the right to enter into hire-purchase
agreements, to compete for jobs, or to own property - do, of course, importantly remove or
inhibit discrimination and make equality of opportunity more possible. But opportunities are not
necessarily taken up, or realized, since gender-based inequalities are supported by a powerful set
of 'unofficial' ideologies which flourish among networks of friends, neighbours, kin, workmates
and colleagues, and are as powerful as they are often implicit or silent. They therefore come into
play, informally, even .within the framework of formally' open' situations, as when' gate-keepers'
select people for employment according to such criteria, or in areas such as the home where.

Thus, it is commonly accepted that the basic work of the house is the woman's responsibility, but
that the husband should make the key decisions, from buying a house to whether the couple
should have more children, over the children's schooling, or even over the uses of leisure time.
All these decisions have consequences for the disposal of resources, their differential allocation
between men and women, and for the futures of the family members. The continuing structural
inferiority of women as a gender limits their individual life-chances. Hence home and the family
are often seen, not as egalitarian, 'caring' and emotionally supportive milieux, a refuge in a
competitive and hierarchical world favourable to the production of stable personalities in the
young, but as a cockpit of tensions, where the inequalities of the wider world penetrate, and as a
social unit, too, with its own additional inequalities and hierarchies which, in turn, feeds into the
stratification system of the society as a whole.