Revision summary
Gender stratifies labour, honour, and the body in its own right. Oakley, Walby, and Connell name care, patriarchy, and masculinities. It intersects class as cheap and unpaid labour. It intersects caste through endogamy and purity. Race and ethnicity police women as group boundaries. NFHS and PLFS show the joint odds.
Model answer
Introduction
Stratification is not only class. Gender organises labour, honour, and the body as a durable rank. It is a dimension because it allocates life-chances in its own right, and because it cuts every other axis. Intersection is the joint, not an add-on.
Body
Why gender is a dimension
- Ann Oakley split sex from gender and made housework labour. Unpaid care is a class-like relation inside the home.
- Sylvia Walby named patriarchy as linked structures: household, paid work, state, violence, sexuality, culture.
- R. W. Connell mapped a gender order and masculinities. Rank is relational, not a women’s residual.
- NFHS on anaemia, mobility, and decision-making, and PLFS on female work, show patterned odds, which is Weber’s life-chances in a gendered key.
Intersection with class
- A wage table that codes only the male earner hides the double day. Heidi Hartmann tied patriarchy to capitalism’s cheap flexible labour.
- Erik Olin Wright’s contradictory locations still sit on a care subsidy.
Intersection with caste
- Endogamy and purity rules, as Leela Dube showed, make caste a gender system.
- Dalit feminist work, with Patricia Hill Collins’s matrix of domination as a cousin, refuses a single “woman”.
- Campus and labour-market exclusion stack jati with gender.
Race and ethnicity
- W. E. B. Du Bois’s colour line is lived in gendered work: domestic service, hyper-visibility, and violence.
- Ethnic honour codes often police women’s sexuality as the boundary of the group, as Fredrik Barth’s boundary thesis implies.
How to analyse, not list
- Do not add inequalities as a heap. Ask how one institution, such as marriage or a factory, organises several ranks at once.
- Census and NFHS cells become intersectional only when the question names the joint.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD G[Gender order] --> STRAT[Stratification] C[Class] --> STRAT K[Caste] --> STRAT R[Race ethnicity] --> STRAT G --> C G --> K G --> R
Conclusion
Gender is a dimension of stratification because it systematically allocates work, honour, and safety. It intersects caste, class, race, and ethnicity by gating who may labour, marry, and speak. Oakley, Walby, Collins, and Dube are the tools. A class-only ladder is a male public fiction.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
What are the theoretical models of societal power ? Which one of them is most applicable in advanced industrial societies ?
Next question in the 2019 paper (Q6). View answer →
-
Is gender only about women?
No. Masculinities and the male exemption from care are part of the rank.
-
Does intersection mean class no longer matters?
Class still structures property. Intersection says it never arrives alone.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2020 · Q2(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
How are Hierarchy and Exclusion the major impediments in the transformation of societies ? Discuss. -
2020 · Q4(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Critically assess social mobility in closed and open systems. -
2019 · Q1(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Davis and Moore made it clear that social stratification is a functional necessity and also an unconscious device. Discuss -
2019 · Q4(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Modernization presupposes class society; however caste, ethnicity and race are still predominant. Explain -
2018 · Q1(d) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What is the difference between natural and social inequality examples from caste and class dimensions -
2018 · Q5(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
In social mobility possible in closed systems of stratification ? Illustrate from research work. -
2017 · Q4(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
What is Weberian critique of Marxist notion of social stratification -
2017 · Q4(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Examine gender. Ethnicity and race as major dimensions of social stratification
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2019 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Discuss the historical antecedents of the emergence of Sociology as a discipline
Sociology
Sociology emerged when industry, the state, and revolution made society a problem. Enlightenment comparison and Saint-Simon–Comte positivism supplied permission. Nisbet’s conservative themes of community and authority also fed the field. Marx, Durkheim, and Weber turned the name into a discipline. Census offices made method a public craft.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2019 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Davis and Moore made it clear that social stratification is a functional necessity and also an unconscious device. Discuss
Stratification and Mobility: Concepts
Davis and Moore: unequal rewards fill important roles; the device is unconscious. Tumin: importance is politically defined. Marx and Weber add exploitation, status, and party. Caste and gender close talent before sorting begins. Use the thesis for incentives; do not use it as a full theory of inequality.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2019 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What is the Marxist concept of 'fetishism of commodities'?
Sociology
Fetishism of commodities: social relations among producers appear as relations among things. Exchange-value hides labour time as price. The illusion is socially real, not a personal superstition. Lukács extended it as reification. Gig pay and piece-rates still carry the appearance.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.