Summary of Ascription and Inequality

Summary of Ascription And Inequality

Marina Carvalho de Macedo

Humber College

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Summary of Ascription and Inequality

In the chapter three of the book Our Society, Human Diversity in Canada, it’s pointing out some very important characteristics of social inequality in Canada as race, ethnicity, sex and social background.

The above mention issues are directly related to the impacts and consequences of the Canadian society life style frequently restricting or increasing the individual’s chances of succeed in society, the author call these effects ascribed statuses.

The race and ethnicity are considerably connected to the income level of the Canadian population” there exists a racial divide in Canada between whites and non-whites” (Angeline, 2012) which influences the ethnic and racial groups  to have less job opportunities because of  discriminatory employment and hiring practices, even though they held a high university degree.

Social background is a significant element to analyse educational levels, according to (Angeline, 2012) “ working-class men and women tend to have lowers levels of postsecondary schooling than their counter-parts in the middle class”, two of the major factors that contribute to the above issue are lower income to finance the cost of  post-secondary education and the less involvement of the working-class parents in the educational concerns, preferring  to leave responsibility to teachers and school system.

Educational levels can also be analyzed by gender. Men and women in Canada have similar levels of education, nevertheless this doesn’t help the discrepancy between men having a higher average income than women. The most important reasons for this inconsistency are: men frequently occupy controlling and ownership positions and they make the decisions on the salaries of the employees, women are excessively employed in professions viewed as part of their household duties, many woman also are kept lower payment jobs and house hold chores and many mothers get little assistance of their fathers and they find themselves in a situation where are obligated to live though social assistance. 

Beside to all this nuisances, the author also highlights the age and disability as significant top related to inequality issues partly because most elderly and disable people are discriminated and labelled as incapable to contribute to the society what make this group experience elevated levels  of unemployment and government assistance.