Abstract
We begin this article with the bold assertion that it is impossible to teach about women and gender at the undergraduate or graduate level without delving deeply into the significance of social class. Psychology of Women courses must make clear that the concept of woman divorced from other social categories is neither realistic nor empirically supportable. Most feminist scholars and teachers already recognize that we cannot teach responsibly without acknowledging the primary significance of ethnicity and sexual identity in women's lives.
Class disparities are vividly illustrated by the widening gap between wealthy elites and all other socioeconomic groups. A larger share of income in the United States is now held by the top 1% of the population than at any other time since 1928 (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2009), and the widespread belief in socioeconomic mobility is negated by the data. More than 50% of individuals who start in the bottom income quintile remain there a decade later, and 70% remain below middle-income status (Economic Mobility Project, 2010). Women are less likely than their male counterparts to move out of the bottom quintile and are more likely to experience downward mobility (Economic Mobility Project, 2010).
Despite these staggering inequities, social class remains relatively neglected in the psychological literature. We offer strategies for addressing this exclusion, starting with a conceptual foundation that clarifies the relationship of social class to power and ending with suggested resources for putting our points into practice in the classroom. The references we cite are good sources of statistical and other relevant information.
WHAT IS SOCIAL CLASS?
Divisions among families and communities by status, expectations, location, and power exist in all but the simplest societies. In the United States (the focus of our attention in this article), one is born into a family that can, with considerable reliability, be identified objectively and subjectively as poor, working class, middle class, or wealthy. This status indicates one's degree of political, social, and economic influence and the extent to which one has access to essential resources (e.g., food, medical care, shelter, and education) and material resources (e.g., wealth, money, and property). The latter, needed to obtain what is essential, can also be accumulated to retain or enhance a position high in the socioeconomic hierarchy. Access to resources is the key indicator of power (Bullock & Lott, 2010).
Widely used indicators of social class include income, occupation, prestige, and education. Regardless of how social class is measured, there is little disagreement that it shapes life experiences and conditions to which people must adapt and learn to navigate as competently as possible for maximum benefit and minimal injury (Lott, 2010). Social class membership is predictive of what life holds in store. It mediates and influences, directly and indirectly, what a person is likely to learn, experience, believe, and seek. In different stages of life, social class is highly predictive of where one resides, the quality of one's education, how one earns a living, family life stressors, how one is able to care for children, and a variety of experiences and opportunities.
As a social construction, social class can be described in terms of what persons do, that is, in terms of performance. It includes “how you think, feel, act, look, dress, talk, move, walk … who our friends are … [and] what kind of car we drive, if we own one” (Langston, 1988, p. 102) as well as what one eats and where one eats. In addition to what one does, and where, is the question of how one does it. An air of entitlement can be observed in the behavior of the economically privileged in a large variety of settings. Studies of high school and college students find that they can tell class differences among their peers by their demeanor and attitudes as well as by their clothes and accessories, their occupational aspirations, and how they spend their leisure time (e.g., Bettie, 2003; Stuber, 2006).
Because power is derived from access to political and economic resources, discussions of social class often focus on power inequities that are the consequence of the unequal distribution of these resources. Food, medical care, shelter, education, and income—necessary for human welfare—are unequally distributed across class lines. The problems created by such inequities, and by the policies proposed to deal with them, have generally been framed in such a way that we tend to see people who have the least access to resources as more problematic than those who have the most. Furthermore, people who identify with the middle class are likely to perceive the poor or the working class as more different from themselves, and the affluent as more similar.
THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF LOW-INCOME WOMEN
In our writing about low-income women (e.g., Bullock, Lott, & Wyche, 2010; Lott & Bullock, 2001, 2007), we include full-time minimum wage workers and those working part time without benefits. We also include those who cycle in and out of public assistance programs because their families would not survive without food stamps, Medicaid, or housing subsidies. We include women who cannot afford to buy a home, and those who are homeless because they cannot afford to rent. We include farm workers and day laborers and all women who struggle to meet their basic needs and those of their families.
Our rich body of feminist scholarship tells us a great deal about the work and family concerns of middle-class women. We thus know more about the glass ceiling confronting professional women than about surviving in the low-wage labor market (where one is expendable and replaceable). Our research tells us about career women's conflicts over not being stay-at-home mothers, but little about how women in the industrial and service workforce cope with family demands and crises and with harassment by their bosses. Awareness of these blind spots is fundamental to feminist pedagogy and to understanding how the personal is political. Work, caregiving, and health are commonly covered topics in a Psychology of Women course. Discussing how class, ethnicity, and gender intersect with them will highlight how class shapes women's experiences (see Bullock et al., 2010; Lott, 2010). Contextualizing women's experiences by exposing class disparities and class privilege is crucial to understanding women's lives.
Gender inequality in employment is greater in the United States than in other industrialized nations (Lott, in press; U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). Women earn less income in practically all job categories, and among those who are the most poorly paid, economic problems are confounded by a lack of benefits (including sick leave and time off to care for ill family members) and a lack of health insurance. In addition, disrespect and discrimination are common when looking for work as well as on the job.
Family concerns are intertwined with work because of the need for child care and the difficulties entailed in finding low-cost or subsidized care of high quality. Being poor also means moving frequently from place to place in a generally futile search for more affordable housing in less dangerous neighborhoods. In addition to worries about their children's safety, low-income mothers have realistic anxieties about their children's health and nutrition, having utilities shut off as bills go unpaid, and not being able to afford children's requests for extras or new clothes. The everyday facts of life for poor women include skipping meals, reliance on food pantries, fear of eviction, and frequent exposure to neighborhood violence. Feeding one's family often means buying low-quality, high-calorie foods that are more affordable in the effort to stretch inadequate budgets to avoid food insecurity.
The health of low-income women and their children has, until recently, been a low federal priority in the United States (National Women's Law Center, 2006). The predictable consequences are limited access to quality care and a greater likelihood of negative health outcomes for the poor of all ages, beginning at birth. Although domestic violence cuts across class lines, there are fewer social and economic resources available to low-income families to deal with it effectively. Poor women's efforts to leave abusive partners are hampered by lack of funds and job security. Some young low-income women see joining the military as a route to higher education and better employment opportunities. These women are at risk for sexual abuse and violence and are fearful of jeopardizing their military careers by reporting it.
Low-income mothers of school-age children are burdened by watching their children receive less attention by teachers than middle-class children or knowing that the neighborhood school they attend is underfunded and has inadequate textbooks, facilities, equipment, and buildings. These mothers, too, are devalued and disrespected by their children's teachers, who see them as disinterested in their children's education and lacking in skills to help them (see Lott, 2003).
Studying social class variability in women's experiences exposes structural and interpersonal dimensions of inequality. Discussing these inequities can enhance students' understanding of how class works and provide concrete illustrations of intersectionality. In addition to traditional lectures and readings, service-learning placements can be a particularly powerful active-learning strategy. The second author, Heather Bullock, teaches an optional reduced-credit service-learning seminar that students can complete in conjunction with a larger lecture course on the Psychology of Women. Over the course of a 10-week quarter, students spend a total of 40 hours (4 hours per week) at a prearranged site and meet biweekly as a group with the instructor to discuss their experiences. Their assigned readings have been selected to complement their placements. Long-term care facilities for senior citizens, which typically have a large female resident population, is an example of an excellent setting for analyzing manifestations of economic (in)security across the life span; relations among ethnicity, class, and gender; health care inequities; ageism in its many forms; and the devaluation of paid and unpaid caregivers (Bullock & Waugh, 2004).
CHALLENGING THE MYTH OF MERITOCRACY AND CLASSIST STEREOTYPES
In the United States, social class remains a taboo topic. Facilitating class consciousness in the classroom requires challenging dominant beliefs about meritocracy and class status (Mantsios, 2007). Unlike other social categories, class is widely regarded as an earned status. As Weber (1998) explains:
The United States is seen as having an open economic system where talent and hard work—not inherited physical traits—are the primary determinants of one's economic location … [Our class system] is viewed as a continuous ladder of income and resources, where people can slide up and down based on their own efforts and abilities (p. 18).
Viewed through this lens, poverty is understood as resulting from individual shortcomings (e.g., laziness and lack of motivation), not structural inequities in education and the labor market, and middle class status is seen as deserved and normative. Women receiving public assistance, especially women of color, have long been the targets of stereotyping and intense public scrutiny (see Schram, Soss, & Fording, 2003).
Challenging individualistic understandings of poverty among college students, despite differences in class background and experiences, is difficult. Most students, even those who self-identify as feminist, tend to regard their college student status as a reflection of their hard work and perceive themselves as upwardly mobile. Questioning sources of privilege and disadvantage can be personally and socially threatening. Critical analysis of class status, however, offers unique opportunities for discussing a wide range of hierarchy-legitimizing beliefs (e.g., beliefs in a just world, the Protestant work ethic, and American dream ideology) that enhance understanding of social class and other inequities.
Systematic presentation of evidence that directly challenges individualistic understandings of poverty and social class can foster structural assessments of inequality. The myth that the United States is a classless society is readily challenged by data showing the widening income and wealth gap between the top 1% of the population and all other economic groups (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2009). The myth that poverty is not a major problem in the United States is exposed by reviewing longitudinal poverty trends (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). Myths that blame poverty on individual shortcomings are refuted by statistics showing the differential wages earned across gender and ethnic groups, despite similarities in educational attainment. Such evidence, coupled with U.S. Census Bureau (2009) data, documents high rates of poverty among women, particularly female-headed households (21.5% of White female-headed households and 40.5% of Black and Hispanic female-headed households). These data suggest that women's poverty and social class issues should be a core concern of feminist psychologists.
RESOURCES FOR CLASS-INCLUSIVE PEDAGOGY
Psychology of Women courses are not unique in their need to attend more fully to social class, which is largely neglected in most undergraduate and graduate psychology classes. To address this exclusion, we co-chaired a jointly sponsored task force of Divisions 35 (Society for Psychology of Women) and 9 (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues) of the American Psychological Association (APA). This task force produced a comprehensive resource manual that includes syllabi, classroom activities, readings, media, and policies relevant to teaching about social class (Task Force on Resources for the Inclusion of Social Class in Psychology Curricula, 2008). The resource manual, housed at APA's Office on Socioeconomic Status, is intended to be a living document with new activities and readings added periodically. It is our hope that the suggestions within the manual for teaching about women and economic justice will help to expand and enrich our Psychology of Women curriculums.
