Women and Social Class

International Feminist Perspectives

Pat Mahony, Christine Zmroczek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135357719
• Subtopic: Social Classes & Economic Disparity
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume presents debates on class within an international context. Its particular focus is on women's theorized experience of social class from a variety of feminist perspectives, contextualized in relation to the countries and regions in which they live. Using personal experience as a basis, contributors cover Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, Britain, Canada, Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, India, Israel, Korea, New Zealand, Poland, and the USA - iluminating the differences and similarities between regions.; Challenging the view that "class is dead" as well as the idea that it is a British phenomenon, the book argues that class needs to be regarded as a key concept in any attempt to understand women's lives. It also reflects on personal and political experiences of class around the world in order to understand the mechanisms through which class discrimination operates and is mediated by gender, sexuality, ethnicity and racism.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• Chapter One: What does it mean to be a middle-class woman in Botswana?
• Chapter Two: The “new Hebrew’s” new woman: growing up Israeli and middle-class
• Chapter Three: Who am I? A journey across class and identity
• Chapter Four: Class, attainment and sexuality in late twentieth-century Britain
• Chapter Five: Women in and after a “classless” society
• Chapter Six: Class, gender and ethnicity: snapshots of a mixed heritage
• Chapter Seven: Class matters: Yes it does
• Chapter Eight: Coming out
• Chapter Nine: Class and transnational identities: a Korean- American woman in England
• Chapter Ten: Personal reflections from the margins. an interface with race, class, nation and gender
• Chapter Eleven: Owning up to being middle class: race, gender and class in the context of migration
• Chapter Twelve: Officially known as “other”: multiethnic identities and class status
• Chapter Thirteen: You nurtured me to be a carefree bird, O Mother
• Chapter Fourteen: Genealogies of class
• Chapter Fifteen: Questioning correspondence: an Australian woman s account of the effects of social mobility on subjective class consciousness
• Chapter Sixteen: Spilling the caviar: telling privileged class tales