Achievement, or of Influence, That One Finds

¶ … achievement, or of influence, that one finds one's self in, regarding education, health, self-esteem, business, politics, housing; class, as a sociological concept, is based upon the relationship an individual has to the means of production and distribution at his or her disposal. The "upper class" is wealthy, and the "lower class" struggles for subsistence. And when a group of "working class" individuals band together to petition management for better wages and working conditions, they may decide to join a union.

"Status" on the other hand refers to the standing a person achieves or experiences with respect to the way in which that person is treated in part of a social order. Everyone has a "status" -- even the person with no money and no home, a "homeless" person has that "status" -- although most people strive to achieve a higher status than what they start out with, with the exception being those born into wealth and privilege.

Equality of opportunity is about equal formal rights for all citizens, and it is about society attempting to assure that the rules are fair and that the playing field is as level as can be for all the players. It does not mean making a society in which all achieve the same status or find themselves in the same class; rather, it just means that everyone has a chance, that jobs are open to all applicants -- and applications are reviewed based on their merits, not on the status of the individual applying for the position. Equality of condition is about believing that people should be as equal as possible with regard to the principal conditions of their lives. When there is an inequality of condition for a person, there is likely to be an inequality of the outcome of that person's life, because inequalities of condition obstruct real equality of opportunity since all those in competition for a job are not starting from the same point.

3. In terms of understanding the situation women find themselves in at the beginning of 2005 -- as to their (social) "status" and/or their (social) "class" -- it is instructive and useful to look first at a report from the recent session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) (Richter, 2003). The event was held in UN Headquarters in New York City, in March, 2003. The report (in Women Magazine) noted that the CSW had struggled in the past in making progress given "a world that is characterized by patriarchy and men dominating the decision-making" (keeping the status of women beneath that of men, as a general rule), but this event was highly successful.

The status of women world-wide, the report showed, has been enhanced by the "changes of industrial and agricultural societies into information based" societies, as the "participation of and access of women to the traditional and new media" -- Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) -- has dramatically impacted woman and girls. The main impact has been that women in all corners of the world now know more about what tools in ICT are available to them, what other women are doing to move from "poverty class" to "middle class," and that there are opportunities with.

An important part of the CSW conference was that high-powered speakers gave hands-on training to female leaders to work towards efforts that will change the status of women through the transformation of stereotypical views of woman as presented in the media. Also, women can, and will, move into a class higher than many have been locked into before, achieving higher positions in education, health, self-esteem, business, politics, housing, and more. That having been said, it is more useful, in understanding women's situation today, to look at their status in the world's picture, rather than the class they are perceived to be in.

4. In functionalism, it is a given that the physical realization of a functional component is not necessarily its essence. It's also a belief in functionalism that the perception of a component, or in the case of the woman's status in society, the perception of how women are progressing in what is essentially a male world, that can be the essence of that component. What we feel through what we see is as pertinent to the topic at hand as what the physical world shows and cannot be denied.

In other words, the social world can be studied in the same way as the physical world, and the social world for women is changing because they are making more money than ever before. Still, though, they don't make as much as men do, even while doing the same work. However, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) reported in October, 2003, that their earning power is being reduced because they have to "take primary responsibility for home and family ... even when they are employed outside the home." And so, the physical realization of women earning less than men is not the essence of the matter: in fact, the GAO reports, "some women use alternative work arrangements such as working part-time or taking leave from work ... [and] take jobs that are more compatible with their home and family responsibilities." Hence, women make less than men, in many cases.