Labor Markets, Gender and Social Stratification

The transition from a planned economy to a market economy has given the labor market a central role to play in social stratification, and if we factor gender into the equation, the current circumstances become even more complicated. The well-known sociologist Anthony Giddens has noted that “gender itself is one of the most profound examples of stratification. There are no societies in which men do not, in some aspects of social life, have more wealth, status and influence than women. One of the main problems posed by the study of gender and stratification in modern societies sounds simple, but turns out to be difficult to resolve. This is the question of how far we can understand gender inequalities in modern times mainly within the framework of class divisions” (Giddens 2009, 460). What we need to understand, therefore, is how class-based inequality interacts with gender differentiation.