Scales of social class
- Created by: Dani42
- Created on: 22-04-23 13:19
The Registrar General’s scale
. Used by the government from 1911-2000.
. Ranked jobs into 6 classes based on the occupational skill of the head of the household.
~ Class I: Professional (accountants, doctors)
~ Class II: Lower managerial, professional and technical (teachers)
~ Class IIINM: Skilled non-manual (office workers)
~ Class IIIM: Skilled manual (electricians, plumbers)
~ Class IV: Semi- skilled manual (agricultural workers)
~ Class V: Unskilled manual (labourers, refuse collectors)
The Registrar General’s scale (strengths)
. Differentiated between MC occupations (non-manual) and WC occupations (manual).
. Involved ranking thousands of jobs for nearly a century.
. Underpinned many important sociological studies and social surveys (esp ones focusing on life expectancy and educational achievement)
The Registrar General’s scale (weaknesses)
. Based on occupation of head of household- sexist and not representative or valid. (Doesn't show full picture of a family's income) Feminists criticise as women assigned to the same class as husband or, if unmarried, fathers.
. Failed to recognise those who don't work. (Long term unemployed, never employed, extremely rich or those who can't work because of disabilities or language barriers etc)
. Failed to distinguish between employed and self employed. (Important because self employed may get more money through the black economy* by avoiding paying tax or VAT by working for cash at a cheaper rate or by not fully declaring all the work they do)
. The assessment of jobs were made by the Registra's own staff, causing a bias towards seeing NM occupations as having a higher status than M.
. Ignores that workers in the same class often have widely varying access to pay and promotion. (Teachers and headteachers in same category but very different salaries)
*The black economy: part of the country's economy that is untaxed and unrecorded by the government (the black market).
The Hope-Goldthorpe scale
. Based on the concept of market position.
. Three main classes: The Service Class, The Intermediate Class and The Working Class.
- Higher professionals (high-grade administrators, managers of large companies, large proprietors)
- Lower professionals (Higher-grade technicians, supervisors of non-manual work, administrators)
- Routine non-manual (clerical and sales)
- Small proprietors and self-employed artisans (craftspersons)
- Lower-grade technicians and supervisors of manual workers
- Skilled manual workers
- Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers
The Hope- Goldthorpe scale (strengths)
. Based on income and economic life chances and takes into account many other factors involved in employment, such as promotion prospects, sick pay and control of hours worked. It also takes into account whether people are employed or self-employed, and whether they are in a position where they are able to exercise authority over others.
. Acknowledged that manual and non-manual groups may share similar experiences of work and so grouped them together into an intermediate class.
. Introduced the idea of three main social divisions into which group sharing similar market position and work relations could be placed.
. It more accurately reflected the nature of the British class system.
. Recognised the growth of middle-class occupations, especially the self-employed.
. It takes into account social mobility.
The Hope- Goldthorpe scale (weaknesses)
. Still based on the position of the male head of household.
. It overlooks the significance of dual-career families, where a joint income of both partners can give the family an income and lifestyle of a higher class.
. It ignores situations where women are in a higher grade occupation than their husbands.
. It overlooks the significance of single working women who are classified according to the occupation of their ex partners or fathers.
. it overlooks the significance of single working parents.
The Surrey Occupational Class Schema
. Feminist alternative- Women are classified on the basis of their own occupations irrelevant of their marital status. Spit into 9 categories:
1) Higher professional
2) Employers and managers
3) Lower professional
4) Secretarial and clerical
5) Supervisors, self employed manual
6a) Sales and personal services 6b) Skilled manual
7) Semi-skilled
8) Unskilled
The Surrey Occupational Class Schema (strengths)
. Divised by feminist sociologist to overcome the patriarchal bias of other scales.
. Women classified on the basis of their own occupations.
. The gendered nature of work in contemporary society is taken into account. (Evident in class 6 which is split into 6a- female dominated and 6b-male dominated.)
The Surrey Occupational Class Schema (weaknesses)
. Inclusion of women in some occupational classifications presents difficulties – women's relationship with work is often more varied as they are likely to work part time or occupy jobs for short periods because of pregnancy and childcare.
. These short and disrupted bouts of employment make it difficult to know whether the class assigned to women provides any meaningful insight into their life experiences, or whether it merely reflects a temporary experience that has little impact on lifestyle and life chances.
National Statists Socio-Economic Classification (N
. A new scale for the 21st-century: a variation of the Hope-Goldthorpe scale and fully replaced the Registrar scale for government research and statistics.
1) Higher managerial and professional (Company directors, barristers, clergy, architects)
2) Lower managerial and professional (Nurses, journalists, teachers, musicians, police officers)
3) Intermediate (Secretaries, clerks, driving instructors, compiter operators)
4) Small employers and self-accountable workers (Taxi drivers, window cleaners)
5) Lower supervisory, craft and related (Train drivers, plumbers, printers, TV engineers)
6) Semi-routine (Traffic wardens, shop assistants, hairdressers, call centre workers)
7) Routine (Cleaners, couriers, road sweepers, labourers)
8) Long term unemployed or the never-worked
NS-SEC (strenghts)
. Takes many factors into consideration; it is based on employment relations (whether employers, self-employed or employed and if they have authority over others) and market conditions (salary scales, promotion prospects, sick pay, how much control over the hrs they work).
. No longer divides worker exclusively along manual/non-manual lines.
. Created an 8th class that recognises the long- term unemployed and never employed.
. Women are recognised as adistinct group of wage earners.
NS-SEC (weaknesses)
. Still primarily based on occupation which may differ from how people interpret the term 'social class' and ignores the cultural sides of class or the subjective interpretations of which class people view themsleves as a part of.
. The very wealthy who don't need to work are not included.
. Differences in status and earning power are not represented (eg headteachers are in the same category as normal classroom teachers)
. Doesn't take into account ethnicity or gender- some have suggested these may be more important in bringing about social divisions and shaping identity.
The Great British Class Survey (GBCS)
. Savage et al. 2013
. Draws on Bourdieu's view that class is not just a matter of economic inequalities but of two other forms of capital- social and cultural.
. Working with the BBC, Savage et al created an online questionnaire that aimed to establish the amounts and types of economic, cultural and socail capital pts possessed.
. Economic captial- measured by questions about household income, household savings, whether people rented or owned property and the value of their house if they did own it.
. Cultural capital- measured by questions about leisure interests/ activitives, music tastes, use of the media and food preferences.
. Social capital- measured by questions about whether people knew anyone in 37 different occupations, ranging from cleaner to chief executive.
GBCS (strengths)
. Takes into account both income and wealth and overall provides a clearer picture of class.
. Avoids accusations of being sexist as it measures each person individually, not just the head of household.
. Acknowledges class is not just a matter of economic position.
GBCS (weaknesses)
. It's doubtful whether the people allocated to classes personally identify with them or engage in collective action to promote their 'class' interests.
. Rose and Harrison (2013) are critical of the inductive methadology used to identify the 7 classes, arguing that if the authors had chosen different key criteria 'then likely very different classes would have emerged.'
. They also criticised Savage for assigning an average age to each group, claiming that age should be irrelevant to class.
Overview
. Overall, class is subjective and different to each individual as they may feel they identify with a class different to that in which they are classified.
. These surveys suggest there is often a discrepancy between how to objectively measure and classify social class or occupations.
. Social mobility is a lot more common in modern times as well as changing occupations. It is now the norm to change jobs about once a decade.
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