Social inequality . It refers to a socio-economic situation, not necessary to the private appropriation or usurpation of goods, resources and rewards, implying competition and struggle. The action of giving different treatment to people among whom there are social inequalities is called discrimination . This discrimination can be positive or negative, depending on whether it is beneficial or detrimental to a certain group.
Summary
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- 1 Inequality
- 2 Consequences of inequality
- 3 Causes of inequality
- 4 Forms of inequality
- 1 Economic inequality
- 2 Inequality between the sexes
- 3 Legal inequality
- 5 Conclusion
- 6 See also
- 7 Reference
Inequality
It is unequal treatment that indicates difference or discrimination from one individual to another due to their social , economic, religious, sex, race, skin color, among others.
Social minorities suffer the most from unequal treatment. Large entities or groups use discrimination to maintain control of small groups. This is seen mainly in the area of politics and religion where they isolate minority groups in order to continue controlling and monopolizing certain areas of society.
It is generally accepted that values such as freedom , justice , peace , respect or solidarity have a universal character; so that in addition to being considered indispensable, they constitute the basic pillars of all democratic societies. However, not all have the same role, and not all are assimilated or internalized equally.
To illustrate this, it is enough to recall the virulent reaction of certain social groups to the approval, for example, of laws that regulate the equal rights of people with different sexual orientation or the problem that appears in developed countries before the more or less massive arrival of immigrants and the reaction of rejection that, sooner or later, some sectors of society show : although solidarity or respect are accepted as desirable, reality undoubtedly shows the double standard with which these values are understood, when living them or make them come true.
Another possible interpretation of this situation would be to identify the obvious difference between the importance given to some values and others, with the existence of a hierarchy between them. Thus, although we speak of great, universal and timeless values, we find different ways of prioritizing them and, even, of interpreting them, whether in function of the social, cultural, political or religious context.
Consequences of inequality
A recent work or meta-study based on the comparison of more than 150 scientific articles reveals that countries with greater economic inequalities have greater mental health and drug problems, lower levels of physical health and lower life expectancy, poorer academic performance and higher rates of teenage pregnancy. not wanted.
In these cases, it was also found that the main explanatory factor is not the income level but the economic inequality . Therefore, the authors of this study conclude that among the more developed countries, the most egalitarian ones obtain a better performance in a wide series of social welfare indices.
Ivan Illich criticizes the strengthening of social inequalities in global health systems, and Freidson analyzes the power of specialists. One of the factors that prevent it from being not only a need for everyone, but an achievable goal, is social inequality. Spain, like other countries, has the tough task of facing this reality.
Unfortunately, health politicians and doctors have been slow to react to that truth. The objective to reduce deficiencies and, therefore, a higher incidence of disease is to reduce social inequalities. The lower social classes get sicker, die earlier and are susceptible to more accidents during their work. One of the most interesting proposals offered in Rodríguez de Miguel’s book “Health and Power” is the need for doctors to learn Social Sciences, and for sociologists to learn Medicine.
Causes of inequality
Rousseau , in his work on the origin of inequalities, using what he calls the natural state of man, derives the inequality of man from the social state.7 Man is not born with inequality until after he compares himself with his fellow men and women. sees their differences is when then the equality of the human being is lost. Rousseau says that inequality owes its strength and its increase to the development of the faculties and to the progress of the human spirit and is ultimately made legitimate by the institution of property and laws.
Anthropological and archaeological study of societies has revealed that Palaeolithic societies were fairly egalitarian, and except for sex and age differences in tasks, there is little or no further differentiation. Men and women of the same age generally have similar skills and knowledge, and there appears to be very little specialization in hunter-gatherer societies .
These evidences point out that inequalities in human societies became more marked in Neolithic societies, in which there was growing specialization and, therefore, asymmetries in access to natural resources, economic assets, general information and knowledge.
The elites responsible for centralizing and organizing food production and custody , in pre-state societies in general, take advantage of their differential access to resources for the benefit of their relatives, which seems to be one of the initial forms of social inequality in human societies.
Forms of inequality
Economic inequality
Economic inequality occurs when two individuals do the same work , but the monetary gain in this case is not the same for both. This is given for several reasons. For Hunt and Colander, the most important factor is differences in individual earnings. These differences are based in part on the occupation and personal qualities of the people involved. The most basic factor that determines the variations in income between occupational groups is demand and supply.
Occupations that require special attitudes and a lot of training have high salaries because the supply of workers is small in relation to the demand. Occupations that are classified as ordinary jobs and that everyone can do with little training or ability tend to pay less. Within each occupational group there are large differences in purchasing power, especially at the highest professional and managerial levels. Another reason is the sex of the individuals involved, that is, male / female. This leads us to inequality between the sexes.
The economic inequality takes on continuous giving occasions throughout the history of humanity, it is believed that even since prehistoric times. What economic inequality itself does is stratify or create classes or levels in society, that is, rich / middle class / poor. One of the products of stratification is seen in the capitalist, boss / employee system. There are other scales that society has been creating little by little with different criteria in order to differentiate between people who can support themselves and those who cannot.
Social classes are determined mostly by historical events of a specific place. Social classes or stratification is the unequal distribution of rights and privileges, duties and responsibilities, rewards and deprivations, social power and influence within a society. It is understood that if two individuals belong to the same social class, they enjoy the same privileges and / or deprivations. Democracy can be withered by socioeconomic inequality, but this inequality is almost inevitable given the norms that govern democratic society.
Gender inequality
According to Raygadas, one of the central factors in the construction of inequalities has been sexual discrimination. Social and cultural distinctions between men and women have been structured to translate biological sex differences into hierarchies of power, status, and income. It can also be defined as the distribution of tasks, jobs and professions based on the female or male gender, this practice, which was common in society, only began to be questioned twenty years ago.
The consequences of this inequality are that women earn less than men, or men less than women (doing the same job, with the same educational title, the same hours). The wage society is not a society of equality, there are a great difference between the income generated by a man and the income generated by a woman and even in the access to social goods that each one has, for example in education and culture. With the inequality between the sexes comes feminism, which is nothing more than the struggle of women to have equal rights, whether economic, political, judicial, among others.
This inequality is something historical since the great empires in which women had no public life. This inequality has gradually weakened due to the struggle of the feminist movement. Feminism fights against the domination of men in some social aspects, which was normal or natural before and which was seen with obviousness. This is not only the fight for equality in certain areas of society but it is also the psychological liberation of women. This means that they will play a more important role in today’s society.
Legal inequality
Legal inequality is legal discrimination, that is, in a court of some individual. This either for economic reasons and that the people who enjoy the laws with greater monetary power are more flexible or have more opportunity to be acquitted. It is also given for racial reasons and / or origin, that is, skin color or country.
What this means is that if an individual with a white complexion and an individual with a black complexion go to court, guilty of the same crime, they should be given the same treatment or sentence. Also if an immigrant individual from another country goes to court accusing someone born in the country in which the accusation is made, he will be treated the same as if it were vice versa.
conclusion
In conclusion, inequality or discrimination is a means of pressure by which members of the higher spheres or social strata prevent people who are in the lower spheres from rising. This speaking of any subject that is politics, environmental, economy, cultural and educational among many others. While the people of the lower classes struggle to reach the top to enjoy the benefits. Inequality, defined as the existence of differences, is omnipresent in nature, according to Gandhi .
We have to think and fight for equality, precisely because there is great inequality in the physical world. That men are not the same is only half true, the other half is that they are. The interconnection of the different dimensions of inequality is an alternative to understand the complexity of this phenomenon. It also shows that the fight against inequality has to articulate actions in the three areas: in the micro-social aspect, in the intermediate level and in the macro-social sphere.
Despite the statute in the American Declaration of Independence that “all men were created equal,” we know that in many ways people are not equal to one another. It is not born with equal potential to learn and achieve things, nor is it born in equally favorable social environments. However, equality before the law and equal opportunity are strongly protected democratic ideals.
