Over the past ten years, increasing attention has been given to the place of women in society, and this has included concern with their position within the system of social stratification. Most studies of social inequalities have, however, continued to take the family to be ‘a solidary unit of equivalent valuation’ and to assume that the class position of the family is entirely determined by the socio-economic status of the head of the household.
Joan Acker in an important paper distinguished four further assumptions implicit in such studies, of which the two most important are: first, that the status of a wife is (assumed to be) equal to that of her husband, at least as regards her position in the class structure; and second, that the fact that women are not equal to men in many ways … is irrelevant to the structure of stratification systems (Acker 1973, p. 937).
This latter assumption itself implies, on the one hand, that wider inequalities have no influence on the (assumed) ‘equality’ of wives, and on the other that relationships within a couple (whose members are seen as equals) cannot be the cause of wider inequalities. Thus while some criticize the fact that a wife’s occupation is not taken into account when grading the family, on the grounds that it contributes to the family income, they nevertheless themselves retain the family as the unit of stratification. (Archer and Giner 1971, p. 14).
Acker goes further, however, and criticizes, first, the inconsistency of the practice of classifying a woman by her own occupation so long as she is unmarried and then abandoning this criterion the day she marries; and second, the assumption that the family is a single unit of equivalent status, i.e. that it is socially homogeneous, even when the woman is not in paid employment.
She suggests, first, that a woman’s own occupation should be taken into account whatever her marital status; and, second, that the role of women without paid work (i.e. housewives) should be considered as an occupation and given a particular place on the occupational scale.
Studying the treatment of women in French analyses of stratification clearly reveals the same sorts of assumption as have been found in work on other western societies, and in many respects I am in full agreement with Acker and others. However, in my opinion it is not sufficient to treat these assumptions as methodological errors or ideological biases which need only to be deplored and corrected. I feel that they should be considered and analysed as unintentional indices (as opposed to analyses) of a hidden social structure.
What these writers have done is draw attention to inconsistencies in the criteria used in the classification of women, and, in particular, to the use of a double standard: that paid work is taken into account for single but not for married women. But they have not examined what this ‘inconsistency’ itself reveals: the use of a double standard in determining social class membership. Occupation, the universal measure of an individual’s social class, is, in the case of women, and only of women, replaced by a completely different criterion – marriage.
It follows from this that women are not integrated into the description of the social structure by applying a rule governing the concept of social stratification, but rather by abandoning this rule. This in my opinion is the principal contradiction in such studies and I believe an analysis of this contradiction to be very fruitful.
The concept of stratification is based on two major premises. First, every modern society consists of hierarchical groups, whether this hierarchy is seen as a dichotomy (marxist theory taken up by non-marxist writers (Bottomore 1965)), or as a continuous scale (as in American sociology). Second, the principle according to which these groups are ranked and individuals included in them is based on their place in the production process in its fullest sense, i.e. including not only their technical function, but also their relations of production in the marxist sense. These criteria are combined in occupation, or, rather, occupation can be analysed according to these dimensions. It therefore serves as an index to categorize individuals into hierarchically organized socio-economic groups. These are usually further grouped into broader categories, for which the term ‘class’ is used by marxist and non-marxist writers alike.
In this paper I shall use the term ‘occupation’ to indicate the criteria according to which individuals are placed within the hierarchy, and ‘class’ to indicate the hierarchically organized groups making up the social structures which together form the system of social stratification or the class system. I shall also be using the term ‘relations of production’ because it explicitly denotes a class system (i.e. a system where occupational groups are regrouped in two broad antagonistic classes in a particular economic formation), whereas the term ‘category’ denotes a point on a continuum of prestige and income, with no sense of antagonism and class struggle.
The universal index for classifying individuals and for determining their class position is occupation. It is the only index used to classify individual men, the basic assumption being that all men occupy some sort of place in production. In all modern western societies something like 50 per cent of women ‘do not work’, that is to say, they have no paid employment. This category is used in studies of economic activity, but not in studies of social stratification. In what ways, then, do stratification studies include women, and how are women represented?
Naville (1971), for example, takes the class structure to be synonymous with occupational divisions among the active population and he therefore excludes from the class structure any individuals without paid work – and thus all women occupied full-time in the home. Girard (1961) goes further and equates the class structure with occupational divisions among economically active males alone, thus excluding not only individuals without employment and women in the home, but all women. In Naville’s work, the active population is described without being divided by sex, with the implication that ‘economically active’ women are on a par with their male counterparts, whether they are married or single. The most common practice, however, is to take account of a woman’s marital status, and to grade married women by their husbands’ occupations and single women by their jobs. A married woman’s own position, that is to say, having a job – and one job rather than another, or not having a job at all, is thus usually not taken into account in determining her class membership.
I shall illustrate this by discussing two studies which exemplify these practices. One is particularly well known to me, as I took part in it, and the other is a classic in French social stratification literature.
The first study, the primary objective of which was to determine the inherited assets of a sample of self-employed workers, also sought to measure and compare the backgrounds and current positions of husbands and wives and their brothers and sisters (siblings). It looked particularly at the relative social mobility of brothers and sisters. The socio-professional categories used were the ten main categories of INSEE (the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies), grouped for the purpose of analysis into three main ‘classes’: upper, middle and lower.
The population studied comprised married couples and included 10 per cent of women. Consequently 90 per cent of the spouses of those studied were women, and 10 per cent were men. The 10 per cent of women included in the study were classified, like the men, in terms of their own occupation. Their husbands, the 10 per cent of male spouses, were also classified in terms of their own occupations. But the class membership of female spouses was determined by two criteria, used not together but as alternatives: employed women were classified according to their own occupation; while women who were not employed were classified according to their husband’s occupation.
Other individuals were also classified – the brothers and sisters of the respondents and the brothers and sisters of the spouses – with the aim of evaluating the comparative mobility of individuals within groups of siblings. Brothers of the respondent or of the spouse were classified according to their occupations; but for sisters, whether they were sisters of the respondent or of the spouse, the criterion of classification varied according to whether they were single or married. Their class position was determined by their occupation if they were single, but by their husband’s occupation if they were married.
Two points should be noted from the above. First, all the women in the study were dealt with according to two criteria, whereas men were dealt with according to only one; and second, all the women in the study were not considered according to the same two criteria.
There are, therefore, three problems to be considered. First, the dual standard applied to one part of the female population; second, the dual standard applied to the other part of the female population; and third, the relationship between these two dual standards.
To begin with the last, and perhaps least important, of these problems: what broader view of stratification does this double use of a dual standard point to? That is to say, what is implied by comparing one population classified by two heterogeneous criteria with another population classified by two different heterogeneous critera? For the sake of clarity, I shall limit myself to the case of women and their siblings.
Siblings of women in the study
The position (in terms of their own occupation) of women studied was compared to:
1the position of their brothers (in terms of their occupations);
2the position of their single sisters (in terms of their own occupations); and
3the position by marriage of their married sisters (in terms of the occupation of their husbands).
Siblings of female spouses
The differing social class positions of the brothers and sisters of the wives of respondents (classified according to (1), (2) and (3) above), were compared to the wives’ own social class position if they were employed, or, if they were not, to their social class position through marriage, i.e. to their husband’s social class position.
One might well ask what the social homogeneity rates of siblings and indices of social mobility mean when calculated in this way! A description is as good as its initial definitions, but only so long as one keeps to the same definitions. One can only compare like with like, and one must avoid combining incompatible categories.
But would the study have been valid if the women studied, their spouses, and the women who were sisters, had been dealt with consistently? It would not, because in that case we would have moved from a double dual standard to a single dual standard. The treatment of sisters would come within the scope of Acker’s critique: only single women would be classified by their own occupation; married women, whether or not they had an occupation, would be classified according to their husbands’ occupation. However, female spouses would be dealt with in a way which would satisfy Acker, since their occupation, if they had one, would be taken into account.
Acker’s two main criticisms are in fact as follows:
1since many women do not have a man (to give them a social class position), we must consider their own occupations; and
2it is illogical, having taken occupation into consideration when women are single, not to take it into consideration when they are married.
The implication of this is that if no married woman had an occupation, it would be less problematic, if not perfectly legitimate, to assign a woman to her husband’s social class.
But from the point of view of consistency, the problem is not solved by taking the occupation of married women into account. That certainly eliminates one of the differences in the way in which the female population is considered: both married women and single women are then classified according to their own occupations. But this does not deal with all the problems. For instance, in the study referred to, the population of female spouses (for whom occupation was taken into account when it was present) is nevertheless still not treated consistently, since some women (with a job) are classified according to their own occupation and others (without a job) are classified according to their husband’s. Thus, not only are female spouses not all classified in the same way, but the whole female population is treated differently from the population of men, since the former have two criteria applied to them, and the latter only one (that of their own occupation).
Comparing the social class of husband and wife
Since in most research the unit of stratification is taken to be the family, comparisons between spouses are not usually made as this is seen as unnecessary. Even if they were deemed necessary, it would be impossible – precisely because, given the dogmatic assumption of homogeneity of status within the family, the social class of the husband is automatically attributed to the wife. There is no way to compare social class positions which by definition are identical.
Nevertheless, certain studies do try to make this comparison, at least in theory. The concept of homogamy (marriage within or across sectors of society), for example, is by definition a measure of distance – and in particular socio-economic distance – between spouses. In order to make such calculations it would seem necessary that the positions to be compared be evaluated; i.e. that we know the class of the wife and of the husband. But even this necessity can be bypassed.
In Le Choix du conjoint (Choosing a Spouse, 1964) Alain Girard looks at homogamy of origin by assessing the distance between the social class of the husband’s father and that of the wife’s father. But in order to measure homogamy at the time of marriage (that is to say, the gap between the spouses’ own social class positions), he compares the class position of the husband with the class position of the wife’s father. As he himself recognizes, ‘since social status is defined by occupation, in order to be completely rigorous one would have to compare the occupations of the spouses’. But, he adds, ‘a large number of women do not have a job, or only have one on a temporary basis until marriage. Thus it is preferable [my emphasis] to consider the occupation of their fathers.’ One might well ask what ‘preferable’ means here. Are we to understand that if a characteristic (in this case occupation) is not a good indicator of what we are seeking to measure (in this case a woman’s own social class position), we are justified in abandoning this dimension in order to keep the indicator, even if it means changing the population studied (i.e. studying the fathers instead of the women themselves)?
If we look more closely, however, we see it is not a case of a methodological error, but a theoretical choice: ‘the milieu from which the woman comes being more significant than her occupation’ (my emphasis). The theory underlying this choice and the criteria according to which the father’s occupation is judged ‘more significant’ are, however, left unexplained. The father’s occupation is not ‘more significant’ for husbands because it is their own occupation that counts.
As far as Girard is concerned, social background is for some reason more significant for women, whereas for husbands it is their own occupation which is crucial. This reasoning, whatever it may be, merits discussion, or at least comment. If what is a ‘significant’ indicator is not the same for women as for men, it is because they are not part of the same system of reference. But there is no justification offered for the choice of different indicators, and no explanation of the reference systems implicitly used.
Not only is the social class distance within the couple not measured, but the choice of indices used prevents any comparison between them. Operationally, the concept of a woman’s own position does not exist. The purported theoretical aim is to study women as members of social groups and as subjects of relationships. But these groups are operationally defined as being made up exclusively of men, and women are operationally defined as being mediators and not subjects in social relationships with men.
This problem is not specific to Girard’s study. Just as in his study husbands are compared with their fathers-in-law, in the preceding study it was brothers being compared with their brothers-in-law and not their sisters; and in social mobility studies, fathers are compared not with their daughters but with their sons-in-law. These sorts of comparison lead us to an important problem: that of the principles according to which women are included in social groups and the theoretical implications of the criteria used to determine women’s class membership. But before discussing the theoretical implications further, we must examine the consequences the criteria used have for measuring social distance between husbands and wives.
The critiques of the treatment of women in stratification studies suggest that it is offensive to women to be classified according to their husband’s occupation, particularly when they have an occupation of their own, and that this leads to a distortion in possible comparisons between women, and between couples (e.g. between those with one or two incomes). But, as we have seen above, so far as women are concerned, taking their own occupations into account resolves nothing. Nor is anything resolved when comparisons are actually made between husband and wife, since in the first study, unlike Girard’s, some women were classified according to their own occupations, which allowed us to evaluate their social distance from their husbands. But all women without employment were put into the same social class as their husbands. The net result was that if, like her husband, a woman had an occupation, this distanced her from him in terms of social ranking; while if, unlike her husband, she was not employed, this brought her closer to him in terms of ranking. Thus, even when a woman’s own occupation is taken into account, putting women who are not employed into their husbands’ social class distorts the comparison between the social class position of husband and wife.
Marriage and the class position of women
In systematically attributing to a woman without an occupation the occupation of her husband, an essential dichotomous variable – that of the presence or absence of economic independence – is obscured. A woman who has an occupation, generally of a lower status than that of her husband, is put in a lower social class than the woman with the same husband but without an occupation (who is put in the same social class as her husband). More particularly, a woman who works, generally in a job of lower status than that of her husband, is considered to be more distanced socially from her husband than a woman who does not work outside the home. The fact that a woman is comparable to her husband from the point of view of economic independence distances her from him in sociological terms. Putting a non-employed woman into her husband’s social class does not just obscure this fact, it completely reverses its meaning.
What is fundamentally in question in the classification of married women without an occupation (and sometimes even with one) in the same class as their husbands is thus that a criterion is being used which is alien to social stratification theory, namely the criterion of association through marriage.
Critics have complained that the occupation of married women is not taken into account in studies of stratification. Implicit in this criticism is the assumption of an association between occupation and social class position. If we accept this assumption, we must conclude that individuals without an occupation have no social class position of their own, and are, therefore, neither a part of, nor capable of being a part of, the stratification system. But if we cannot bring ourselves to admit that one part of the population has no social existence, we must conclude that not having an occupation in itself constitutes a specific position, which is the position of individuals in this situation.
Consequently, the same criticism which is made of the allocation of married women who do have an occupation of their own to their husbands’ social class (i.e. the fact that their own occupation is not taken into account), can also be applied to women who do not have a job. For women who do not have a job, their own social position is not taken into account, i.e. it is not treated as an economic situation. (Nor is it treated as the absence of a social position, which, strictly speaking, makes it impossible to classify them with any group.) Quite illogically, it is considered as both a necessary and sufficient reason for attributing to them, without further examination, someone else’s social class.
We have seen that the class structure is frequently equated with the occupational distribution of the economically active male population; or at best, with the total economically active population. In the first case no woman, and in the second no full-time housewife, is included in this social structure. From an operational point of view then, classes include few or no women.
Nevertheless, it must be admitted by the layperson and the social scientist alike, that women, if not actually within the class system, can hardly be anywhere else. The concept of a class system as a stratification system is exhaustive, in the sense that it is supposed to cover all the possibilities in a given society. This aim is never challenged even by those who criticize specific features of the concept or the criteria used.
Jackson (1968), for example, mentions the problem of categorizing the ‘dependent sections of the population such as the old, the young and married women’. For him, ‘classifying those who are not part of the work force in a stratification system based on industrial occupations presents difficulties.’ But apparently he sees these as being purely technical, because, although he recognizes them, this does not lead him to put forward a stratification system based on criteria which would be applicable to the whole population. Nor does it lead him to challenge the universal claims of a system which is manifestly partial, since, by his own admission, it is concerned with only one section of the population.
In the light of this we can draw out several assumptions implicit in the study of social stratification which can be added to those put forward at the beginning:
1The absence of an occupation is seen as meaning the absence of a place of one’s own in the class structure.
2Marriage is considered a valid criterion for determining class membership only so far as women are concerned. (No man is classified according to his wife’s occupation, even when he himself has no occupation.)
3Marriage is used over and above occupation for women, even for those who live on their own, since women who do have an occupation are usually classified according to their husband’s social class.
4Marriage puts a woman into the same relations of production as her husband. Since determination of class membership through one’s own occupation and its determination through marriage are judged to be equivalent, an indirect relationship to class is thus clearly judged to be equivalent to a direct one.
But in reality, not having an occupation does constitute a specific situation. Even having an indirect relationship to an occupation constitutes a specific situation. The latter situation characterizes women and only women. Thus, wives and daughters constitute a sociological class where membership is defined indirectly, as opposed to the sociological class of men where class membership is defined directly. A woman’s own position in sociology is that of having a place in the stratification system which is mediated and conditioned by a personal relationship (to a father or husband).
Marriage as a class position for women
At the level of knowledge, sociology reflects and reproduces a social class, just as membership of a class reflects and reproduces an actual economic situation. The relationship of women without an occupation to the economic world is a mediated and not a direct one. Women without jobs are not part of the economic sphere (the labour market and the system of industrial wage-labour) whose operation determines the critieria for social stratification. Nevertheless, they do have a relationship to production, a means of earning their living. But what they participate in is a mode of production which is not part of classical economics, or rather of economics as classically defined. They are neither selling what they produce for money, nor their labour for a wage. Their labour power is being given in return for maintenance. Thus, not only are they not a concrete part of the labour force, but on a theoretical level too, they are not integrated into the classical mode of production (wage labour, capitalist or socialist). Their specific relationship to production cannot be reduced to the analytical categories derived from classical economics. Their labour relationship is part of a specific mode of production, different from and parallel to the wage-labour mode.
The existence of this particular mode of production, which I first described as patriarchal in 1970, had previously been unacknowledged and has only slowly begun to gain some recognition. The specific patriarchal relations of production of married women, whether or not they also have a classical relationship to production (i.e. paid work), are characterized by dependence. And it is this dependence which provides the basis for putting women in the same social class as their husbands. What is more, it is only as dependents that women are seen to belong to the social class of their husbands. Having made use of this dependent status to put women in the same social class as their husbands, sociologists are anxious to forget this necessary condition, and to forget that it is the crucial criterion for allocating women to a socio-economic class. Sociologists use it, and must use it in order to affirm class parity between husband and wife; but having done this, they obscure the premises used and consider only the result. They treat this class parity as a predominant factor in the couple relationship. Or rather, this so-called class parity is used to minimize the dependency relationship within the couple. The relations between the man and woman within the couple, and particularly her economic dependence on him, are always treated as secondary, since the shared social status – seen as more general and therefore carrying more weight in determining an individual’s situation – is supposed to override internal disparities. Unfortunately, this ‘parity of status’ is based necessarily and exclusively on women’s dependence.
The actual situation is, therefore, the reverse of the one put forward. Not only do the relations of production which put husband and wife into patriarchal and antagonistic classes override commonality of industrial class, since they precede it both chronologically and logically, but they contradict it, since women without an occupation are by definition outside the industrial class system. Certain women, however, in so far as they have an occupation, fall within the confines of the industrial class system. Nevertheless, the fact that their dependence on their husbands is chosen as an index of class membership more frequently than their own occupation, constitutes a sign, though not the only one, that the patriarchal class system overrides the industrial one.
Thus, the criteria used in determining the class membership of women, if they are analysed correctly, clearly reveal the true position of women. Sociology, however, by reproducing social reality at the level of knowledge, prevents us, ipso facto, from analysing and clarifying the situation. On the contrary, sociology uses this relationship of dependence in order to situate women within the classical system of stratification. It thus obscures the fact that women form part of another mode of production. Sociology roots its analyses in the specific antagonistic relations of production between husbands and wives, and then not only denies this relationship, but transforms it into its very opposite: a relationship between equals.
* This article first appeared in Andrée Michel (ed.), Femmes, sexisme et sociétés, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1977. An English translation was included by H. Roberts in her edited collection, Doing Feminist Research, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1981.