Full Description
Bringing together the latest empirical evidence with a discussion of sociological debates surrounding inequality, this book explores a broad range of inequalities in people's lives. As well as treating the core sociological topics of class, ethnicity and gender, it examines how inequalities are experienced across a variety of settings, including education, health, geography and housing, income and wealth, and how they cumulate across the life course. Richly illustrated with graphs and figures showing the extent of inequalities and the differences between social groups, the book demonstrates how people's lives are structured by inequalities across multiple dimensions of their lives. Throughout, the text pays attention to how we know what we know about inequality: what is measured and how, what is left out of the picture, and what implications this has for our understanding of specific inequalities. Importantly, the book also highlights the intersections between different sources or forms of inequality, and the ways that bringing an intersectional lens to bear on topics can highlight and challenge the assumptions about how they operate.Designed for second-year undergraduates and above, this book provides an engaging overview of social stratification and challenges readers to think about how inequalities are embedded across society.
Contents
1. Introduction1.1 The importance of inequality1.2 Equality and inequality: concepts and definitions1.3 Inequalities across groups1.4 Coverage and key themes2. Class 2.1 Concepts, definitions, measurement2.2 Class distributions and inequalities2.3 Social mobility3. Gender3.1 Definitions, concepts and coverage3.2 Gender inequalities in work3.3 Gender and domestic work: women's double burden?3.4 Gender, class and caring: inequalities between women4. Ethnicity4.1 Ethnicity: definitions and measures4.2 Ethnic groups and diversity4.3 Ethnic minorities in the labour market5. Youth and age5.1 Inequalities across the lifecourse5.2 Inequalities in youth and age5.3 Inequalities in mid-life6. Education6.1 Qualifications and inequality6.2 Education and gender6.3 Ethnicity, education and intersections6.4 Higher education and inequality7. Income, wealth and poverty7.1 Concepts and measures7.2 Illustrating inequalities in income, wealth and poverty7.3 Ethnic minority women's poverty8. Health and disability8.1 Disability, definitions and scope of chapter8.2 Disability and inequality8.3 Health inequalities9. Housing and geography9.1 Deprived areas9.2 Housing10. Conclusions: Inequality, Intersectionality and Diversity References
