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Systems of Social Stratification 197

The third estate consisted of the commoners. Known as serfs, they belonged to the
land. If someone bought or inherited land, the serfs came with it. Serfs were born into
the third estate, and they died within it, too. The rare person who made it out of the
third estate was either a man who was knighted for extraordinary bravery in battle or
someone “called” into a religious vocation.
Women in the Estate System. Women belonged to the estate of their husbands.
Women in the first estate had no occupation, since, as in the case of their husbands,
work was considered beneath their dignity. Their responsibility was to administer the
household, overseeing the children and servants. The women in the second estate,
nuns, were the exception to the rule that women belonged to the estate of their hus-
bands, as the Roman Catholic clergy did not marry. Women of the third estate shared
the hard life of their husbands, including physical labor and food shortages. In addi-
tion, they faced the peril of rape by men of the first estate. A few commoners who
caught the eye of men of the first estate did marry and join them in the first estate.
This was rare.

Class
In early industrialization, children
As we have seen, stratification systems based on slavery, caste, and estate are rigid. The worked alongside adults. They
lines drawn between people are firm, and there is little or no movement from one group worked 12 hours a day Monday to
to another. A class system, in contrast, is much more open, since it is based primarily Friday and 15 hours on Saturday,
on money or material possessions, which can be acquired. This system, too, is in place often in dangerous, filthy conditions.
at birth, when children are ascribed the status of their parents. Unlike the other systems, This photo was taken in 1908 at a
West Virginia coal mine.
however, individuals can change their social class by what they achieve (or fail to achieve)
in life. In addition, no laws specify people’s occupations on the basis of birth or prohibit
marriage between the classes. Watch on MySocLab
A major characteristic of the class system, then, is its relatively fluid boundaries. A Video: Understanding Social Class
class system allows social mobility, movement up or down the class ladder. The poten-
tial for improving one’s life—or for falling down the class ladder—is a major force that
drives people to go far in school and to work hard. In the extreme, the family back-
ground that a child inherits at birth may present such obstacles that he or she has little
chance of climbing very far—or it may provide such privileges that it is almost impossible
to fall down the class ladder. Because social class is so significant for our own lives, we
will focus on class in the next chapter.

Global Stratification and the Status of Females
In every society of the world, gender is a basis for social stratification. In no society is
gender the sole basis for stratifying people, but gender cuts across all systems of social
stratification—whether slavery, caste, estate, or class (Huber 1990). In all these systems,
on the basis of their gender, people are sorted into categories and given different access
to the good things available in their society.
Apparently, these distinctions always favor males. It is remarkable, for example, that in
every society of the world, men’s earnings are higher than women’s. Men’s dominance
is even more evident when we consider female circumcision (see the box on page 301).
That most of the world’s illiterate are females also drives home women’s relative position
in society. Of the several hundred million adults who cannot read, about two-thirds are
women (UNESCO 2012). Because gender is such a significant factor in what happens to
us in life, we shall focus on it more closely in Chapter 10.
The Global Superclass
The growing interconnections among the world’s wealthiest people have produced class system a form of social
a global superclass, one in which wealth and power are more concentrated than ever stratification based primarily on the
possession of money or material
before. There are only about 6,000 members of this superclass. The richest 1,000 of this possessions
1
superclass have more wealth than the 2/ 2 billion poorest people on this planet (Rothkopf
2008:37). Almost all are white, and, except as wives and daughters, few women are social mobility movement up or
an active part of the superclass. We will have more to say about the superclass in down the social class ladder