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European Sociological Review 11:1-15 1995
© 1995 Oxford University Press

research-article

Class, Gender, and the Asymmetry Hypothesis

GORDON MARSHALL, STEPHEN ROBERTS, CAROLE BURGOYNE, ADAM SWIFT and DAVID ROUTH

Nuffield College Oxford OX1 INF, UK.
Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, Washington Singer Laboratories Perry Road, Exeter EX4 4QG, UK.
Balliol College Oxford OX1 3BJ, UK
Department of Psychology, University of Bristol 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, UK.

This paper reviews three interconnected issues that have been central to the controversial problem of describing the relationship between class and gender. First, the matter of taxonomy, and whether or not extant class schemes are suitable for the study of women's employment. Second, the question of how sex segregation in the occupational structure relates to regimes of class inequality and class mobility; more specifically, of the connections between absolute mobility rates and relative mobility chances. Finally, the attempt to identify the unit of class composition, in particular the so-called asymmetry hypothesis concerning the pattern of relationships among the class positions of spouses and the attributes that are said to comprise socio-political class formation. We argue that the last of these provides the most important strand to the debate, and present new cross-national data on the relationships between class identities, voting behaviour, and the social class standing of male and female partners. The findings for advanced capitalist societies support the conventional view that the unit of class composition is the household. However, those for post-communist states are contrary to conventional expectations, suggesting that processes of sociopolitical class formation may be different in East and West.

Manuscript received: November 1, 1993.


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