Class Questions

Feminist Answers

Joan Acker

• Publisher: AltaMira Press
• Year: 2005
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780759114500
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Class is a particularly troublesome issue in the United States and other rich capitalist societies. In this feminist analysis of class, noted sociologist Joan Acker examines and assesses feminist attempts to include white women and people of color in discussions of class. She argues that class processes are shaped through gender, race, and other forms of domination and inequality. Class Questions: Feminist Answers outlines a theory of class as a set of gendered and racialized processes in which people have unequal control over and access to the necessities of life-processes including production, distribution, and paid and unpaid labor. Historically, gender and race-based inequalities were integral to capitalism and they are still fundamental aspects of the class system. Acker argues that capitalist organizations create gendered and racialized class inequalities and outlines a conceptual scheme for analyzing 'inequality regimes' in organizations. Finally, the book examines contemporary changes in work and employment and in economic/political processes, including current events like deregulation, downsizing, and off-shoring, that increase inequalities and alter racialized and gendered class relations. This book will appeal to readers interested in a feminist discussion of class as a racialized and gendered process intimately tied to the capitalist economic system.

Table of contents

• THE GENDER LENS SERIES
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Series Editors’ Foreword
• 1 - Introduction—The Feminist Problem with Class
• 2 - Feminists Theorizing Class—Issues and Arguments
• 3 - Thinking about Gendered and Racialized Class
• 4 - Is Capitalism Gendered and Racialized?
• 5 - Large Organizations and the Production of Gendered and Racialized Class
• 6 - Changes in Gendered and Racialized Class
• 7 - Conclusion—Some Optimistic Proposals
• References
• Index
• About the Author