Social Class, Gender, Race and Ethnicity

Social class is most often used to refer to the primary system of social stratification found in modern capitalist societies. It has been suggested that inequality is a feature in all human societies (Haralmbos and Holborn 2004). For sociologist Karl Marx stratification by class was particularly important to him and he in fact argued that all societies except for the most primitive and tribal ones were all class societies (Fulcher and Scott 1999).

In modern western context social class stratification is divided into three layers; the upper class, the middle class, and the working class. A person’s position in the structured layers of social groups influence the chance and opportunities to gain economic wealth and economic power, this position also affects access and opportunities in sport.

For Marx there were two distinct classes, the capitalist class who own the means of production and the working class who only own their labour power which they sell to the capitalist class in return for wages. For Marx the formation of social classes results from a given society’s economic structure or base, he argued that classes formed the only groups in society and inequality was a result of a group’s relationship to the means of production (Haralambos and Holborn 2004)

Social class is not a label applied for convenience in society to differentiate social groups in terms of similarities or differences in occupation, lifestyle or attitudes, it is, rather an inequality of opportunity.

Sex is the biological differences which separate men from women. It refers to the physical characteristics of the body. On the other hand gender does not refer to the physical attributes in terms of which man and women differ, but the socially formed traits of masculinity and femininity (Giddens 2007).

Sex and gender are not always in perfect agreement: a person can be male and feminine or female and masculine furthermore both sex and gender role are matters of degree. People are male or...