Page 80 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Unit 5: Forms of Social Stratification

Social constructs are generally understood to be the by products of countless human choices Notes
rather than laws resulting from divine will or nature.
The social construction of meaning applies to various values, norms and beliefs that are created
by the dominant economic and most powerful groups in American society. These values,
norms and beliefs are perpetuated and reinforced by social institutions like the workplace, the
media, education, religion and others. These values, norms and beliefs primarily dictate access
to upward mobility as well as shaping identity, personality, and gender roles. Gender roles
and norms often result as the outcome of a socialization process based on the dominant values,
norms and beliefs of society. From birth on, infants, of both sexes are conditioned by parental
and other adult responses to behave, think, act, and interact in gender-specific role
manifestations.
There are many examples of the different traits and attributes that males and females are
socialized to accept as their own in society. Female children, for the most part are encouraged
to be cooperative, compassionate, caring, and nurturing; largely in preparation for roles as
wife and mother. Male children, in contrast, are socialized toward independence, assertiveness,
competition, and achievement; they are often expected to suppress their emotions and feelings.
We are born male or female, but not masculine or feminine. Femininity is an artifice, an
achievement, ‘a mode of enacting and reenacting received gender norms, which surface as so
many styles of the flesh. There are significant differences in gesture, posture, movement, and
general bodily comportment : women are far more restricted than men in their manner of
movement and in their spatiality. In her classic paper on the subject, Iris Young observes that
a space seems to surround women in imagination that they are hesitant to move beyond : this
manifests itself both in a reluctance to reach, stretch, and extend the body to meet resistances
of matter in motion—as in sport or in the performance of physical tasks—and in a typically
constricted posture and general style of movement. Woman’s space is not a field in which her
bodily intentionality can be freely realized but an enclosure in which she feels herself positioned
and by which she is confined. The “loose woman” violates these norms : her looseness is
manifest not only in her morals, but in her manner of speech and quite literally in the free and
easy way she moves.
Gender and Caste
Caste permeates all aspects of Indian life. However, gender is one of the primary axis on which
caste stratification rests, particularly in modern India with hierarchies of caste often articulated
through gender. Using unique data collected by the authors for 40,000 households all over India,
this chapter distinguishes between public and private performance of gender to show that belonging
to a Brahmin caste has a substantial effect on the public behaviour of women but little impact on
their behaviour inside the household. Brahmin families are far more likely to show a nod of
deference to the dictums of obedience and chastity in their public behaviours by insisting on
limiting premarital contact between the bride and the groom, limiting women’s visits to their
natal families, insisting on women not going out alone in public and following a dress code which
includes veiling. However, in private, Brahmin women have as much authority in the household
decision-making as women of other castes. We argue that this Brahminical code of gender
performance has implications for the public discourse surrounding gender in India which is used
to justify a variety of oppressive actions and institutions, particularly violence against women of
lower castes.
Historically, India has been a predominantly Hindu nation, though there is a substantial degree of
religious diversity. With 12 per cent of the population being Muslim, India is home to the second
largest Muslim population in the world. Christians form about 3 per cent of the population and
Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism and other smaller religions are followed by another 3 per cent.

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