Feminist explanations of social inequality in wealth, income and poverty
- Feminists would identify patriarchy as being the cause of inequalities between genders
- men tend to be in position of authority within the home and workplace they inevitably control the decision making – see Lukes
- Jan Phal (1993) found women are economically disadvantaged within the home as men tend to control and manage a couple’s income
- in the workplace women’s careers are often cut short to raise children constraining their lifetime earning potential
- The glass-ceiling reduces the capacity of women to reach higher positions in their career
- Recent evidence also suggests when women do reach senior positions their pay is significantly less than their male counterparts such as at the BBC
Evaluation
- The weakness of this argument is it ignores the ability of successful women who rise to the top as well as raise a family
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