The DOI matches its Crossref record; 93 of the 93 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Why Status Matters for Inequality
Abstract
To understand the mechanisms behind social inequality, this address argues that we need to more thoroughly incorporate the effects of status—inequality based on differences in esteem and respect—alongside those based on resources and power. As a micro motive for behavior, status is as significant as money and power. At a macro level, status stabilizes resource and power inequality by transforming it into cultural status beliefs about group differences regarding who is “better” (esteemed and competent). But cultural status beliefs about which groups are “better” constitute group differences as independent dimensions of inequality that generate material advantages due to group membership itself. Acting through micro-level social relations in workplaces, schools, and elsewhere, status beliefs bias evaluations of competence and suitability for authority, bias associational preferences, and evoke resistance to status challenges from low-status group members. These effects accumulate to direct members of higher status groups toward positions of resources and power while holding back lower status group members. Through these processes, status writes group differences such as gender, race, and class-based life style into organizational structures of resources and power, creating durable inequality. Status is thus a central mechanism behind durable patterns of inequality based on social differences.
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Cites
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“Decades of expectation states research, however, demonstrates that status processes among actors are largely driven by widely shared status beliefs about the worthiness and competence of people in the social groups to which the actors belong (Berger et al. 1977; Correll and Ridgeway 2003; Webster and Foschi 1988).”
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Cited by
Eagly, A. H., Nater, C., Miller, D. I., Kaufmann, M., & Sczesny, S. (2020) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/amp0000494 · Cited by 1,136
The cost of color: Skin color, discrimination, and health among African-Americans
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O’Meara, K., Kuvaeva, A., Nyunt, G., Waugaman, C., & Jackson, R. (2017) · American Educational Research Journal · doi:10.3102/0002831217716767 · Cited by 292
Bias in Online Freelance Marketplaces: Evidence from TaskRabbit and Fiverr
Hannák, A., Wagner, C., Garcia, D., Mislove, A., Strohmaier, M., & Wilson, C. (2017) · Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing · doi:10.1145/2998181.2998327 · Cited by 286
Men Set Their Own Cites High: Gender and Self-citation across Fields and over Time
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Metadata
- Authors
- Ridgeway, C. L.
- Venue
- American Sociological Review
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2013-12-19
- Volume
- 79
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1-16
- ISSN
- 0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-8271
- OpenAlex
- W2118690925
- Cited by
- 965
- References
- 93
- FWCI
- 90.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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