Ridgeway, Cecilia - Why Status Matters for Inequality (ASR)

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DOI: 10.1177/0003122413515997

2014 79: 1 originally published online 19 December 2013American Sociological ReviewCecilia L. Ridgeway

Why Status Matters for Inequality

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American Sociological Review2014, Vol. 79(1) 116 American SociologicalAssociation 2013DOI: 10.1177/0003122413515997http://asr.sagepub.com

2013 Presidential Address

Sociologists want to do more than describesocial inequality. We want to understand thedeeper problem of how inequality is madeand, therefore, could potentially be unmade.What are the mechanisms? How do weuncover them? To do this more effectively, I

argue that we need to more thoroughly incor-porate the effects of a relatively neglectedform of social inequalitysocial statusalongside effects based on resources andpower. To make my case, I will attempt to

show how status acts as an independentforcein the making of inequality based on gender,race, and class.

ASR79110.1177/0003122413515997American Sociological ReviewRidgeway

aStanford University

Corresponding Author:Cecilia L. Ridgeway, Stanford University,Department of Sociology, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg.120, Stanford, CA 94305E-mail: [email protected]

Why Status Matters forInequality

Cecilia L. Ridgewaya

Abstract

To understand the mechanisms behind social inequality, this address argues that we need tomore thoroughly incorporate the effects of statusinequality based on differences in esteemand respectalongside 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 resourceand power inequality by transforming it into cultural status beliefs about group differencesregarding who is better (esteemed and competent). But cultural status beliefs about whichgroups are better constitute group differences as independentdimensions 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 ofcompetence and suitability for authority, bias associational preferences, and evoke resistanceto status challenges from low-status group members. These effects accumulate to directmembers of higher status groups toward positions of resources and power while holding backlower status group members. Through these processes, status writes group differences such asgender, 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 ofinequality based on social differences.

Keywordssocial status, interpersonal relations, inequality, gender, race, class

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2 American Sociological Review79(1)

At a broader level, I will argue that, in thesearch for mechanisms, we need to open upthe traditional study of inequality in two keyways. First, we need to more thoroughly

interrogate the nature of inequality itself totake into account its multidimensional com-plexitythat is, to examine its cultural aswell as material dimensions and to incorpo-rate group-based inequality, such as race andgender inequality, along with socioeconomicinequality. Second, we need to look acrosslevels of analysis from the individual andinterpersonal to the organizational to themacro-structural and cultural to discover how

inequality processes at each level interpene-trate one another to create and sustain pat-terns of resource inequality. In my view, themost important mechanisms, the ones thathave the most obdurate power to sustainbroad patterns of inequality, often emergefrom the systematic interaction of processesat multiple levels (see DiTomaso 2013;Reskin 2012; Ridgeway 2011). If we con-strain our analyses to inequality processes at

one level at a time, these multi-level mecha-nisms will continually elude our grasp. Inwhat follows, we will see that an examinationof the significance of social status for ine-quality illustrates each of these issues: theneed to incorporate cultural as well as mate-rial processes, to take into account groupdifference-based inequality, and to link microand macro processes.

We are all familiar with Webers ([1918]1968) classic analysis of three different butinterrelated bases for inequality in industrialsocieties: resources, power, and status. Con-temporary accounts of stratification in U.S.sociology focus primarily on resources andpower. Control over resources and access topositions of power in organizations that pro-duce and distribute resources are closelyrelated processes that provide the materialrepresentation of inequality in society. Butwhat about social status, which is inequalitybased on differences in honor, esteem, andrespect (Weber [1918] 1968)? Status is oftentreated as a side topic in U.S. sociology, pos-sibly because it is seen as the weakest, or

least causally significant of Webers threebases of inequality. That is, in contrast toresources and power, status is not seen as anindependentmechanism by which inequality

between individuals and groups is made.This, I argue, is a major misjudgment thatgreatly limits our ability to understand howstratification actually works in an advancedindustrial society like our own. At a microlevel, it limits our understanding of what is atstake in social inequality. When we think ofinequality as merely a structural struggle forpower and resources, we forget how much peo-ple care about their sense of being valued by

others and the society to which they belonghow much they care about public acknowl-edgement of their worth (Goode 1978). This isstatus. People care about status quite asintensely as they do money and power. Indeed,people often want money as much for the statusit brings as for its exchange value. An airportshoe-shine man once asked me what I did.When I told him, he said, My daughter wantsto go to Stanford and be a physician. What I do

is just for her; I want her to besomeone. Now,what was that about? Power? Not so much.Money? Yes, a bit. But above all it is aboutpublic recognition of his daughters socialworth. It is about social status. Clearly, we can-not understand the fundamental human motiva-tions that enter into the struggle for precedencethat lies behind inequality if we do not also takeinto account status.

At a more macro level, treating status as aside topic limits our ability to understand howstatus-based social differences, such as gen-der and race, are woven into organizations ofresources and power. It even limits our abilityto fully understand how class itself is repro-duced through organizations of resources andpower (cf. Sayer 2005). I will focus here onthis more macro aspect of why status matters,but as I do so, I want to keep in mind themicro aspect of how important status is as amotivation for individuals.

I believe there are two reasons why statusprocesses have been difficult to digest forstandard sociological accounts of stratifica-tion. One is that status, in contrast to resources

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Ridgeway 3

and power, is based primarily in culturalbeliefs rather than directly on materialarrangements. That is, status is based onwidely shared beliefs about the social catego-

ries or types of people that are ranked bysociety as more esteemed and respected com-pared to others (Berger et al. 1977; Jackson1998).1 Second, these cultural status beliefswork their effects on inequality primarily atthesocial relational levelby shaping peoplesexpectations for themselves and others andtheir consequent actions in social contexts(Berger et al. 1977; Ridgeway and Nakagawaforthcoming). Both the culturalist and the

micro-level aspects of status processes con-trast with the materialist and structural levelperspectives of most analyses of stratifica-tion, which typically focus on income, wealth,occupational structures, social mobility, andso on. Yet, to understand how patterns ofinequality persist in an obdurate way, despiteongoing economic, technological, and socialchange, we have to understand the relation-ships between cultural status beliefs on the

one hand and material organizations ofresources and power on the other hand. Thisis a problem that my own research on statusand the resilience of gender inequality forcedme to confront (Ridgeway 2011).

In what follows, I first outline three broadreasons why status processes matter for thelarger structure of inequality. I then shift tohowstatus matters by describing three micro-level processes through which status indepen-dently creates material inequalities betweenpeople from different social groups. I givesome attention to how these processes aresimilar and different for gender-, race-, andclass-based status effects. Then, to illustratethe impact of these micro status processes onmaterial (resource and power) outcomes, Ioffer examples from recent research that dem-onstrate such effects for gender, race, andclass inequality.

WHY STATUS MATTERS

Why do cultural status beliefs about socialdifferencesthat is, evaluative beliefs about

contrasting categories or types of peoplematter for inequality? There are three funda-mental reasons. First, as Tilly (1998) pointedout, inequality based purely on organizational

control of resources and power is inherentlyunstable. It gives rise to a constant strugglebetween dominant and subdominant individu-als. To persist, that is, for inequality tobecome durable inequality, control overresources and power has to be consolidatedwith a categorical difference between peoplesuch as race, gender, or life style.

Why does this consolidation stabilize ine-quality? It does so because it transforms the

situational control over resources and powerinto a status difference between types ofpeople that are evaluatively ranked in terms ofhow diffusely better they are. Researchshows that status beliefs develop quicklyamong people under conditions in which cat-egorical difference is at least partially consoli-dated with material inequality. Specifically,status construction studies show that whencontrol over resources in a social setting is

correlated with a salient categorical difference(e.g., race), people quickly link the appear-ance of mastery in the situation that theresources create with the associated differencebetween types of people (Ridgeway et al.2009; Ridgeway et al. 1998; Ridgeway andErickson 2000). In this way, among others,people form status beliefs that the type ofpeople who have more resources (e.g., whites)are better than the types with fewerresources. Furthermore, because both advan-taged and disadvantaged groups experiencethe apparent superiority of the advantagedtype, the resulting status beliefs are sharedby dominants and subdominants alike, legiti-mating the inequality (Jackman 1994; Ridge-way and Correll 2006).

Contemporary U.S. status beliefs assertthat people in a particular category, saywhites, men, or the middle or upper class, arenot only more respected but also presumed tobe more competent,especially at what countsmost in society, than are people in contrast-ing categories, such as people of color,women, or the working class (Cuddy, Fiske,



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and Glick 2007; Fiske et al. 2002).2This pre-sumption of greater competence implies thathigher status people have fairly won theirbetter jobs and higher incomes on the basis of

their own superior merit. It thus provides anespecially powerful form of legitimation in anostensibly meritocratic society such as ourown.

The second reason why status beliefs mat-ter is that, by transforming mere control ofresources into more essentialized differencesamong types of people, status beliefs fuelsocial perceptions of difference. Constructingstatus beliefs about what types of people are

better drives us to focus on, exaggerate, andmake broader, more systematic use of sociallydefined differences among us (Lamont 2012;Lamont and Fournier 1992). The categoricaldifferences recruited to become status differ-ences to stabilize inequality can be amplifica-tions of preexisting differences like sex orethnicity (Tilly 1998). But they can also bedifferences constructed entirely for the pur-pose of asserting the status superiority of the

richer and more powerful, as in the case ofclass-based manners and life style (Bourdieu1984; Weber [1918] 1968). Elites, forinstance, signal their class status superioritythrough sophisticated speech, clothing, andtastes in art (Bourdieu 1984). Status processesthus mobilize the construction of culturallydefined social differences on the one hand.On the other hand, high-status actors rely ondifference, with its self-justifying implica-tions about their own superiority, to stabilizetheir control over material inequality. In thisway, status processes are deeply implicated inthe making of obdurate patterns of inequalitybased on social differences.

This brings us to the third reason why sta-tus beliefs about social differences matter forinequality. Few sociologists would deny thatstatus stabilizes resource and power inequali-ties, but that in itself does not make status anindependent source of material inequality.However, the development of status beliefsabout different categories of people has afurther effect that, in my view, is the mostimportant of the three. It is also much less

recognized. Once widely shared status beliefsform about a social difference such as race,gender, or class-based life style, these beliefsconstitute that difference as an independent

dimension of inequality with its own sustain-ing social dynamic. That is, when a differencebecomes a status difference, it becomes aseparate factor that generates material ine-qualities between people above and beyondtheir personal control of resources.

Consider the following example. Say thatmen in a given society acquire an advantagein resources and power compared to womenin that society. That fosters the development

of status beliefs that men are better. Oncesuch gender status beliefs develop, however,they advantage men because they are menandnot because they are richer or more powerful.A male leader, for instance, with the sameposition and access to the same resources as awoman leader, wields more influence than thewoman because he is seen as a bit more capa-ble in the job than she is (Eagly and Carli2007). Gender status beliefs thus give men an

advantage over women who are just as richand located in positions that are just as pow-erful. As a consequence, status beliefs aboutdifferences such as gender, race, or class-based life style give those differences anautonomous dynamic that can continuallyreproduce inequalities in material outcomeson the basis of those differences. This autono-mous dynamic operates primarily at the socialrelational level of selfother expectations,judgments, and behavior. Yet it is the key tohow status-based social differences are writ-ten into material organizations of resources,especially in a society that values meritocracyand enacts legal constraints on explicitly dis-criminatory organizational rules.

Development of cultural status beliefsabout group differences, then, partially disag-gregates those differences from the directcontrol of resources and power and givesthose differences, as status distinctions, inde-pendent causal force. This, in turn, creates areciprocal causal interdependence betweencultural status beliefs about social groups andmaterial inequalities between these groups.



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Ridgeway 5

This interdependence has an element ofdynamic tension. Control over resources bythe status advantaged group is never com-plete. Changing material conditions push

back against cultural status beliefs, poten-tially modifying and even eroding them. Yetonce established, widely shared status beliefshave considerable resilience, so that theybecome a powerful, independent force for theperpetuation of patterns of inequality basedon social difference.3

In the rest of my remarks, I describe morespecifically exactly how cultural status beliefs,acting through micro-processes at the social

relational level, independently create materialinequalities on the basis of social difference. Iwill turn from why status matters to how itdoes. It will be helpful to begin by saying alittle more about status beliefs themselveswhy I focus on them and what the evidencesuggests about their existence and nature.

STATUS BELIEFS AND SOCIALRELATIONS

The Nature of Status Beliefs

Status is an inherently multi-level form ofinequality in that it involves hierarchies ofesteem and influence between individualactors as well as hierarchies of social esteembetween groups in society. Decades of expec-tation states research, however, demonstratesthat status processes among actors are largelydriven by widely shared status beliefs aboutthe worthiness and competence of people inthe social groups to which the actors belong(Berger et al. 1977; Correll and Ridgeway2003; Webster and Foschi 1988). Culturalstatus beliefs about group differences are thusthe key to status processes at both the indi-vidual and the group level.

Social psychological research on contem-porary cultural stereotypes of social groups inU.S. society clearly documents the existenceof widely shared status beliefs (Fiske 2011).This research shows that status beliefs form acentral component of the widely known ste-reotypes of virtually all the social groups by

which inequality in life outcomes is patternedin U.S. society. This includes gender, race,age, occupational, and educational groupsand class categories like blue-collar versus

middle-class or rich versus poor (Cuddy et al.2007; Fiske et al. 2002). In these stereotypes,the perceived competence and agentic capac-ity attributed to people in one group com-pared to another is directly and powerfullycorrelated with their relative status. Thesestereotypes and the status beliefs they containare consensual in society in that virtually every-one shares them as cultural knowledge aboutwhat most people think (Fiske et al. 2002).

Finally, and importantly, the presumption thatmost people hold these beliefs gives themforce in social relations (Ridgeway and Correll2006). Because individuals expect others tojudge them according to these beliefs, theymust take status beliefs into account in theirown behavior, whether or not they personallyendorse them.

How, then, do these widely shared statusbeliefs shape social relations in ways that are

independently consequential for material ine-quality? There are three well-documentedprocesses: status biases in judgments andbehavior, associational preference biases, andreactions to status challenges.

Status Biases

For status beliefs to bias peoples judgmentsand behavior, they need to become implicitlysalient and this depends on social context,albeit in ways that can be systematicallyspecified. Research shows that status beliefsabout a social difference become salient incontexts in which people differ on the socialdistinction (e.g., a mixed-sex, mixed-race, ormixed-class setting) and in contexts in whichthe social difference is culturally understoodto be relevant to the settings goals, as in agender-, race-, or class-typed setting (Bergerand Webster 2006; Correll and Ridgeway2003). When status beliefs are implicitlysalient, they bias peoples expectations fortheir own and the others competence andsuitability for authority in a situation. These



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implicit biases are stronger the more relevantthe social difference is perceived to be to thegoals of the setting. For example, these biasesare stronger in gender-, race-, and class-typed

institutional settings such as elite universitiesfor class and race and in engineering class-rooms for gender. Biased expectations forcompetence and authority, in turn, are impor-tant because they have self-fulfilling effectson peoples behaviors and outcomes. Bysubtly shaping behavior, status beliefs createinequalities in assertive versus deferentialbehavior, actual task performance, attribu-tions of ability, influence, and situational

rewards between otherwise equal men andwomen, whites and non-whites, and middle-class and working-class people (Correll andRidgeway 2003; Driskell and Mullen 1990;Ridgeway and Correll 2004; Ridgeway andFisk 2012; Webster and Driskell 1978).

These implicit status biases shape both thesupply side and the demand side of peo-ples everyday efforts to achieve the resourcesand positions of power by which we gauge

material inequality. Status biases affect theconfidence and energy with which people putthemselves forward in a situation. Theysimultaneously affect others willingness topay attention to them and positively evaluatetheir efforts in that situation. The statusadvantaged speak up eagerly while the statusdisadvantaged hesitate; the same idea soundsbetter coming from the advantaged thanfrom the disadvantaged; and the advantagedseem to themselves and others to be somehowthe type for leadership. As a result, localhierarchies of influence and prominence thatdevelop over multiple encounters and con-texts take on systematically similar forms.

These rarely noticed status biases repeatover and over again through the many goal-oriented encounters taking place in conse-quential organizational environments such asschools, workplaces, and health organiza-tions. The cumulative result is that individu-als from more privileged status groupsmen,whites, the middle classare systematicallytracked into positions of greater resources andpower, contributing as an independent force

to the patterning of material inequality basedon gender, race, and class attributes. Throughthese same implicit, cumulative processes,men, whites, and the middle class are also

apparently revealed to be simply better atvalued social tasks than are women, people ofcolor, and the working class, justifying andlegitimating the resource and power inequali-ties between these groups. Although we par-ticipate every day in these social relationaleffects of status beliefs, we rarely see howthey involve us in the production of who isbetter and more deserving of resources andadvantages. It is because we do not see this

production that status legitimizes inequalityin an apparently meritocratic society.

Associational Preference Biases

A second means by which status beliefs aboutgroup differences create material inequalitiesis by introducing systematic biases in whopeople prefer for association and exchange.Individuals first reactions to group differ-

ences are to prefer people like themselves(see Dovidio and Gaertner 2010). But whenthe difference is a status difference, bothhigh- and low-status group members recog-nize that the higher status group is moresocially respected (Ridgeway et al. 1998;Tajfel and Turner 1986). Because the status ofthose with whom an actor associates affectsthat actors own status in a situation (i.e., sta-tus spreads through association), this cre-ates systematic incentives for actors toassociate with higher status others (Berger,Anderson, and Zelditch 1972; Sauder et al.2012; Thye 2000). Consequently, statusbeliefs intensify the in-group bias of high-status group members who see every reasonto prefer people like themselves, not only forsociability but to recommend and hire forjobs. But these same status beliefs blunt thein-group bias of lower status group memberswho are torn between sticking with their ownor favoring those from high-status groups.

The effects of status-based associationalbiases on actual patterns of association arecomplex because they depend on structural



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Ridgeway 7

constraints of the environment that shape whois available for association (McPherson,Smith-Lovin, and Smith 2001). At the veryleast, however, these biases undermine asso-

ciational solidarity among individuals fromlower status groups. Krysan and colleagues(2009), for instance, found that, even control-ling for a neighborhoods socioeconomiclevel, whites preferred all-white over racially-mixed neighborhoods, but blacks preferredracially-mixed over all-black neighborhoods.

In organizational contexts, associationalbiases feed the process of cloning by actorsfrom higher status groups. As Kanter (1977)

pointed out long ago, the inherently uncertainconditions of exercising power encouragepowerful organizational actors to favorsocially similar others whom they feel theycan rely on. To the extent that these powerfulactors are members of high-status gender,race, and class groups, the people they net-work with and promote in an organization willdisproportionately be from these same high-status groups. Organizational actors from low-

status gender, race, and class groups, incontrast, will have divided interests betweensupporting those from their own groups andtrying to network with higher status actorswho can foster them in the organization(Cabrera and Thomas-Hunt 2007; Ibarra 1992;Sauder et al. 2012). Polls show, for instance,that women often prefer to work for malebosses (Gallup 2011). The systematic result,again, is to direct people from higher statusgroups smoothly toward positions of powerand resources while creating network and,therefore, informational and opportunity bar-riers for those from lower status groups.

Reactions to Status Challenges

A third mechanism by which status beliefs cre-ate material inequalities derives from theimplicit motive status beliefs create for peoplein high-status groups to defend their valuedsense of group position (Blumer 1958; Bobo1999). When individuals from low-statusgroups engage in behavior perceived to chal-lenge the status hierarchy, they frequently

encounter a hostile backlash reaction from oth-ers, especially from high-status others(Ridgeway, Johnson, and Diekema 1994).White women who engage in assertively dom-

inant behavior are, compared to similar actingwhite men, disliked as domineering, morelikely to be sabotaged on a task, and judged asless hireable (Rudman et al. 2012). As Rudmanand colleagues (2012) show, these backlashresponses are not due to the perception thatthese woman are not appropriately warm, butto the fact that they are challenging the genderstatus hierarchy by acting too dominant.Livingston and Pearce (2009) show that

African American men who appear assertivelydominant elicit similar backlash responses,presumably because their behavior challengesthe racial status hierarchy.4Bobo (1999) arguesthat a great deal of racial prejudice in the con-temporary United States can be understood asa defense of racial group status position.Behaviors perceived to challenge the classstatus hierarchy are likely to elicit similarbacklash reactions. Whereas status bias and

associational biases produce relatively unthink-ing biases in favor of the status privileged andagainst the less status privileged, defense of thestatus hierarchy results in more intentionallyhostile actions to constrain lower status indi-viduals who are perceived to go too far.

Status Processes as Mechanisms ofInequality

Tilly (1998) argued that inequality betweengroups in society is maintained by a combina-tion of exploitation and opportunity hoarding.As scholars have noted, however, this tells usmore about the interests of dominant groups,the why question, than about the howquestion, that is, the specific mechanisms bywhich inequality is sustained (DiTomaso,Post, and Parks-Yancy 2007; Reskin 2003).Status bias, associational bias, and resistanceto status challenges are culturally driveninterpersonal processes that act as subtle butpowerful mechanisms by which exploitationand opportunity hoarding are actually accom-plished by privileged gender, race, and class



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status groups. If we ignore them, our effortsto undermine durable patterns of gender, race,and class inequality are likely to be continu-ally frustrated.

SIMILARITIES ANDDIFFERENCES IN GENDER,RACE, AND CLASS STATUSPROCESSES

Thus far, I have discussed effects of statusbeliefs as if they were equivalent for gender,race, and class. In important ways, this is the

case in that status biases, associational prefer-ence biases, and resistance to status chal-lenges occur for all three social distinctions.But, this underlying similarity is not the fullstory due to structural and cultural differencesin the nature of gender, race, and class as sta-tus distinctions in the U.S. context. This, infact, is quite a complex subject that I am onlygoing to hint at here.

I noted earlier that effects of status beliefs

depend on the extent to which the social con-text of an interpersonal encounter makes sta-tus beliefs implicitly salient to participantsand relevant to their concerns in the setting.The social contexts in which people of differ-ent sexes, races, and classes do or do not rou-tinely encounter one another are thus importantto the nature of the status effects that occur.Cross-category interactionsthat is, mixedsex, race, or class interactionstrigger par-ticipants status beliefs, so they are powerfulsites for relational status effects. Due to struc-tural factors such as demographic proportions,degree of intimate interdependence, anddegree of institutional and residential segrega-tion, the rate of routine cross-category interac-tion is quite high for gender, but rather less forrace and class. This is especially the case forcross-category race and class interactions thattake place outside of occupational role struc-tured encounters (e.g., a convenience storeclerk and a customer) (DiPrete et al. 2011;Ridgeway and Fisk 2012).

Gender, of course, is distinctive in that evenhousehold and family interactions are typically

cross-category in terms of gender but not raceor class. It is not surprising then, that statusprocesses triggered in cross-category interac-tions are especially important for the daily

production of gender inequality (Ridgeway2011). Cross-category encounters still play animportant role for race and class inequality,however, despite their lower overall rate. Thisis because consequential encounters in resourcedistributing institutions, such as employment,education, and health organizations, are typi-cally cross-category for racial minorities andthose from lower status class groups.

Status beliefs are also salient and shape

events in status homogeneous encounters ifthey are perceived to be relevant to the goalsof the setting (Berger and Webster 2006).This means that same gender, same race, orsame class contexts can be significant sitesfor relational status processes if somethingmakes status beliefs seem relevant to the par-ticipants. As I noted earlier, the culturallytyped nature of the institutional context inwhich an encounter takes placefor exam-

ple, a male-typed occupational setting, suchas engineering, or a class- and race-typedneighborhoodcan create this relevance.

The interests created by the status hierarchyitself can also create this contextual relevanceby shaping actors motives in a setting. This isparticularly likely in meetings of high-statusgroup members. The implicit project at thecountry club, the elite school, or the menssports club can be to collectively construct andenact participants difference and superiority incomparison to the excluded group (Khan 2011).The effect of status beliefs in this context is notto differentiate among the people in the setting,but to unite them in a collective project of dis-tinction, a process that has been studied indetail in regard to class, at least, by Bourdieu([1972] 1977, 1984) and other cultural sociolo-gists (DiMaggio 1987; Lamont 1992).

In addition to the relative importance ofcross-category versus within-category statuseffects, gender, race, and class also differ forcultural reasons in ways that have implica-tions for how status processes based on themplay out. In this regard, class is distinctive in



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comparison to gender and race, at least in theU.S. context. Dominant U.S. beliefs treat sexcategory and race as relatively essentialized,stable aspects of people that are rooted in the

body (Morning 2011; Prentice and Miller2006). Class, in contrast, is believed by peoplein the United States to be achieved and, there-fore, changeable (Kluegel and Smith 1986).5These different ideological representationshave consequences: according to psychologi-cal research, people treat class as though itwere less of an immutable essence of a personthan are gender or race (Prentice and Miller2007). This is despite what Bourdieus ([1972]

1977, 1984) concept of habitushas taught usabout how class is actually written into peo-ples ways of being. It is also despite the factthat, as ethnomethodologists have demon-strated, in everyday social encounters, gender,race, and class are all interactional accom-plishments (West and Fenstermaker 1995).

These differences in essentialization matterfor status processes in social relations becausestatus distinctions depend on the maintenance

of a perceived boundary of difference betweenhigher and lower status categories and a cul-tural means for placing people in these catego-ries. Reflecting the construction of class asachieved rather than essential, the cues bywhich individuals class categorize one anotherin interactionssuch as occupation, educa-tion, dress, accent, family background, andresidenceform a less unified, more looselybounded set of status attributes than do themore essentialized attributes by which peoplesex or race categorize. As a result, class statuseffects in interactions are likely to be morevariable across situations, as the class cuesinvolved differ, than are gender and race statuseffects (DiMaggio 2012; Ridgeway andKricheli-Katz 2013; Sayer 2005).

In addition, whereas the common structureof status beliefs is to assert a differencebetween contrasting groups that is construedto show one group as more worthy and com-petent than another, the exact nature of thedifference that reveals the superiority in worthand competence can take different forms. Inthe United States, the construction of class as

achieved rather than an immutable essenceaffects this as well. It causes class status dif-ferentiation to depend especially strongly onthe maintenance of distinctive cultural prac-

tices, accomplishments, and possessions tomark and manifest the status boundary. Theseclass life style groups are the status groupsto which Weber ([1918] 1968) referred.

In particular, the class-based status hierar-chy turns more intensely on higher class peo-ples possession of exclusivecultural capitalthan do the race and gender status hierarchies(Bourdieu 1984; Veblen 1953). For higherclass peoples elite capital to remain exclu-

sive, it must continually adapt and change.For instance, inside knowledge about whatit takes to impress admissions committees ofelite colleges evolves to maintain the com-petitive edge of class privileged groups(Ridgeway and Fisk 2012; Stuber 2006). Thedistinctive reliance on exclusive knowledgecharacterizes the processes through whichstatus matters for inequality based on classmore than that based on race or gender.

Now that I have made a general case forhow status processes acting at the social rela-tional level independently create materialinequalities based on social differences, I willbriefly describe some empirical examplesfrom recent research that show how statusprocesses are consequential for gender, race,and class inequality. The gender and classexamples highlight effects of status biasesand associational biases, and the race exam-ple illustrates the consequential effects ofreactions to status challenges. I chose theseexamples to illustrate different ways that sta-tus can matter, ways that can also apply toother status-valued social differences.

GENDERING ORGANIZATIONS

For gender, I draw on my own work to illus-trate how status processes can help answer afundamental question about how genderinequality persists in the modern contextwhere institutional, legal, and economic pro-cesses work against it (Jackson 1998;Ridgeway 2011). A wide range of research



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demonstrates that assumptions about the gen-dered characteristics of ideal workers for jobsand about the lesser value of womens workare stamped into the very structures, prac-

tices, and procedures of employment organi-zations (Acker 1990; Charles and Grusky2004; England 2010; Reskin, McBrier, andKmec 1999). Examples are the sex-typingand sex-segregation of jobs, different author-ity structures associated with male and femalejobs, and the gendered assumptions built intoconventional structures of work time and pro-motion rituals. These gendered workplacestructures, in turn, drive gender inequality in

wages, authority, and even the householddivision of labor (England, Reid, andKilbourne 1996; Petersen and Morgan 1995;Smith 2002; Williams 2010).

But how are gendered assumptions writteninto workplace structures and procedures inthe first place? The root mechanism, I argue,is the operation of gender status processes,particularly status biases and associationalbiases, working in the room at the social

relational level as the new job definition,evaluation system, authority structure, or wayof working is created (Ridgeway 2011). Nel-son and Bridges (1999), for instance, showthat several widely used organizational pay-setting systems were developed in interper-sonal decision-making contexts in whichdominant actors, who were largely whitemales, denied women and other lower statusactors a significant voice in the proceedings.The resulting pay practices they developedwere infused with gender status biases andsystematically disadvantaged the pay forfemale-dominated jobs. In regard to one suchcase, Nelson and Bridges (1999:199200)write, In systems such as this, . . . where theprinciples and practices of salary setting canbe traced to the interests and activities of keyactors . . . the data suggest that the disadvan-taged position of female workers in thebureaucratic politics of this system has bothcontributed to and tended to preserve inequal-ity in pay between predominantly male andfemale jobs. Once created, implicitly gen-dered organizational structures and proce-dures spread through institutional processes

and persist through bureaucratic inertia(Baron et al. 2007; Phillips 2005).

The cutting edge of gender inequality,however, lies at sites of innovation where new

types of work or new forms of living are cre-ated. Such sites tend to be small, interpersonalsettings that are outside established organiza-tionsthink of computer companies thatstarted in garages or software companies thatemerged from students talking in their collegedorms. Both the uncertainty of their tasks andthe interpersonal nature of the setting increasesthe likelihood that participants will implicitlydraw on the too convenient cultural frame of

gender to help organize their new ways ofworking. Perhaps background gender beliefsimplicitly shape what they decide is the coolversus routine part of their work, or theirassumptions about how they should worktogether, who is good at what, or what kind ofpeople should be brought into the project inwhat roles. As they unknowingly make use ofgender beliefs to help order their work, par-ticipants reinscribe cultural assumptions about

gender status and gender difference into thenew activities, procedures, and forms oforganizations they create. The effect is to rein-vent gender inequality for a new era. In thisway, I argue, gender status processes, actingthrough cultural beliefs that shape interper-sonal events, act as a general mechanism bywhich gender inequality is rewritten into neworganizational forms and practices as theyemerge, allowing this inequality to persist inmodified form despite social and economictransformations in society. This status-drivenpersistence dynamic does not mean genderinequality cannot be overcome, but it doessuggest a constant struggle with uneven results(Ridgeway 2011).

CLASS STATUS ANDGATEWAY INTERACTIONSMy example of how class-based status pro-cesses shape material outcomes focuses onwhat I call gateway interactions (Ridgewayand Fisk 2012). These are interpersonalencounters that take place in organizationssuch as educational, workplace, or health



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Ridgeway 11

institutionsthat mediate peoples access tothe valued life outcomes by which we judgeinequality, like good jobs, income, positionsof power, and health. Encounters with school

officials, job interviews, and doctor visits areexamples. Class-based status beliefs are espe-cially likely to become salient in gatewayencounters when participants differ in classbackground, and the status biases about com-petence that they introduce have consequen-tial material effects. Lutfey and Freese (2005),for instance, describe how a middle-classphysician, expecting less competence from aworking-class diabetes patient, prescribed a

simpler treatment regime than was suggestedfor a middle-class patient. The simplerregime, however, is slightly less effective incontrolling the disease.

In institutions in which gateway encountersoccur, the dominant actorsdoctors, educa-tors, managers, professionalsare over-whelmingly middle class. As a result, theseinstitutions workplace cultures and practicesare infused with the implicit but distinctive

assumptions, values, and taken-for-grantedknowledge of the middle class. This, itself, isan example of how class status, as status, notmerely control of resources and power,becomes embedded in organizational struc-tures of resources and power. But in gatewayencounters, the implicitly classed nature of thesocial rules that govern the encounter have afurther effect. They create a context in whichthe implicit interactional rules are betterunderstood and more familiar to middle-classpetitioners (e.g., job applicants, patients, andstudents) than to working-class ones (Bourdieu1984; Stephens et al. 2012). This knowledgedifference reinforces the presumed compe-tence differences evoked by class status bias(Ridgeway and Fisk 2012).

Lareau (2002) gives us an example in thevisits to pediatricians that she observed withmiddle-class and working-class parents andchildren. With the confidence of a class statusequal, the middle-class mother prepped herson to not only answer the doctors questionsbut to ask questions in return. The boy didthis and soon established a friendly banter

that allowed the doctor to learn more aboutthe childs eating habits and whether he wastaking his medication. With richer informa-tion, the doctor was able to offer more effec-

tive treatment.The working-class mother, in contrast,seemed intimidated and hesitant in the face ofthe doctors status superiority. Both she andher son gave minimal answers to the doctorsquestions and did not volunteer information.The outcome of this constrained and uneasyinteraction was that the doctor knew lessabout the child and gave the mother limitedfeedback about the boys health. For working-

class people, consequential gateway encoun-ters are cross-class, status-biased contextsthat often invisibly frustrate their efforts toachieve the valued life outcomes these sig-nificant encounters mediate.

CHALLENGES TO THE RACIALSTATUS HIERARCHYFor an example of how racial status processes

matter for power and resource inequality, weneed look no further than contemporary polit-ical developments that coincided with eventsone could perceive as challenges to the estab-lished racial status order of the United States.Substantial recent immigration and projec-tions in the popular press that whites willsoon lose their position as the demographicmajority coincided with the election of anAfrican American president. Research onreactions to status challenges suggests that atleast some whites are likely to react to theseevents with status-motivated political effortsto reassert their own, more privileged, racialstatus position.

Two recent Internet experiments by Willer,Feinberg, and Wetts (2013) clearly demon-strate this status challenge reaction. In thefirst study, the researchers showed partici-pants in one condition graphs depicting adeclining white income advantage over non-whites. After exposure to this racial hierarchythreat, whites, but not non-whites, reportedsignificantly greater support for the Tea Partyand higher levels of symbolic racism. This is



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in comparison with whites and non-whites ina control condition who saw graphs thatdepicted the persistence of white incomeadvantage.

In the second study, the researchers told allparticipants that whites are a rapidly decliningproportion of the population and would soonbe a minority. After this racial hierarchy threat,participants were again asked their viewsabout the Tea Party, but the movement wasdescribed for half the participants as backing,among other policies, actions directed at theracial order, such as immigration controls,welfare cuts, and so on. For the other partici-

pants, the Tea Party was described simply inlibertarian, free market terms. Reacting to theracial status threat, whites identified signifi-cantly more with the Tea Party when itincluded racial order policies than in thepurely libertarian condition. The views ofnon-whites were unaffected. These resultssuggest that whites perceptions of challengesto their racial status position do in fact evokeresistance reactions that increase their support

for political organizations they perceive asupholding the traditional racial hierarchy.This, in turn, has potential consequences forthe evolving power relations between racialgroups in the contemporary United States.

CONCLUSIONS

To understand the mechanisms by whichsocial inequality is actually made in society, Iargue that we need to more thoroughly incor-porate the effects of statusinequality basedon differences in esteem and respectalong-side those based on resources and power. Thisis particularly the case if we wish to under-stand the mechanisms behind obdurate, dura-ble patterns of inequality in society, such asthose based on social differences like gender,race, and class-based life style. Failing tounderstand the independent force of statusprocesses has limited our ability to explainthe persistence of such patterns of inequalityin the face of remarkable socioeconomicchange, or to explain, for instance, phenom-ena like the stall in the gender revolution

(Cotter, Hermsen, and Vanneman 2004;England 2010).

As a basis for social inequality, status is abit different from resources and power. It is

based on cultural beliefs rather than directly onmaterial arrangements, and it works its effectsprimarily at the actor level of everyday socialrelations rather than at a larger structural level.These ways in which status is distinctive as aninequality process present challenges to inte-grating it into our standard accounts of socialstratification. But the difficulties we encounterin incorporating status also illuminate all wehave been missing in our efforts to understand

the foundations of social inequality. We needto appreciate that status, like resources andpower, is a basic source of human motivationthat powerfully shapes the struggle for prece-dence out of which inequality emerges.Equally, we need to appreciate that inequalityprocesses at the micro level work together withthose at the macro level to create the mutuallysustaining patterns of inequality among socialgroups in society that make such patterns so

difficult to change.I have argued that cultural status beliefsabout groups or types of people shape indi-viduals social relations through three pro-cesses that are consequential for inequalityamong individuals and groups in society.Status biases shape implicit assumptionsabout who is better, more competent, andmore deserving of jobs, promotions, money,and power. Associational preference biasesshape who people form ties with and favor forexchange of information, opportunities, andaffection. And, resistance reactions to statuschallenges act to constrain lower status peo-ple who go too far. These micro-level statusprocesses have important, underlying com-monalities across otherwise different socialdistinctions such as gender, race, and class,despite there also being real differencesamong them. Acting through social encoun-ters that repeat over and over again in theorganizations that distribute resources andpower, the effects of these processes accumu-late. They subtly, but persistently and system-atically, direct individuals from higher status



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Ridgeway 13

groups toward privileged life outcomes whileholding lower status others back.

In the end, it is status that drivesgroupdif-ferences as organizing axes of inequality, in

contrast to mere individual differences inresources and power. And it is widely sharedcultural status beliefs at the macro level thatshape the everyday social relations at themicro level that infuse group differences intopositions of power and resources in societysconsequential institutions and organizations. Itis also such micro-macro status processes thatimplicitly subvert the resistance of the disad-vantaged and legitimate the structure of ine-

quality. It is time we took status more seriously.

Acknowledgments

I thank Shelley Correll and Eva Myersson Milgrom forcomments on an earlier draft and the Center for theAdvanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences for a vitalintellectual context in which to frame this address.

Notes

1. I speak of categories or types of people here

because of my intention to discuss the role of statusin gender, race, and class inequality. However, sta-tus rankings pertain to social actors more broadly,and thus can involve rankings among corporateactors, such as organizations or the producers ofhigh- or low-status products, as well as individu-als and types of individuals (Sauder, Lynn, andPodolny 2012). Even for corporate actors, statusrelations are inter-actor social relations (e.g., Appleversus Dell in computers). Status relations amongorganizations are also consequential for the struc-ture of material inequality in society, but because I

am focusing on gender, race, and class inequality, Iwill not deal with this here. 2. In discussing class-related status beliefs, I will

focus primarily on the middle- versus working-class contrast. The largest part of the U.S. popula-tion is concentrated in these two class groups, somost interpersonal encounters that evoke class sta-tus beliefs involve people from these groups, andstatus beliefs about them are culturally prominent(see Ridgeway and Fisk 2012). It is worth remem-

bering, however, that being upper class, rather thanjust middle class, evokes a further advantage in sta-

tus and competence, just as being lower class ratherthan working class brings a further status and com-petence disadvantage (Fiske 2011).

3. Key to the dynamic tension between cultural sta-tus beliefs about differing groups and the powerand resource differences between those groups

is the tendency for widely shared cultural beliefsto change more slowly than the material circum-stances they reflect (Brinkman and Brinkman 1997;Ogburn 1957; Ridgeway 2011). Due to this culturallag effect, people confront changing material condi-

tions with cultural status beliefs that are more tradi-tional than the circumstances. Acting on the moretraditional beliefs reframes the new conditions inless innovative terms, blunting the change effect.Over time, however, continuing pressure fromchanging material circumstances does change status

beliefs. For a discussion of evidence for this argu-ment in regard to changing gender status beliefs,see Ridgeway (2011, chapter 6).

4. An attentive reader will notice an intersectional gapin these studies of status challenge effects for whitewomen and for African American men. Research

shows that cultural beliefs about gender and black-white race create more complex, intersectional sta-tus challenge effects for African American women,

but these women, too, face status motivated barri-ers to their efforts to achieve leadership positions(Livingston, Shelby, and Washington 2012;Ridgeway and Kricheli-Katz 2013).

5. I am not arguing here that gender and race actuallyare more essential social differences than class,

but rather that they are represented as being so inwidely held cultural beliefs in the United States.Beliefs about the relatively essential nature of raceand the relatively unessential nature of class may bedistinct to the U.S. context.

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Cecilia L. Ridgewayis Lucie Stern Professor of SocialSciences in the Department of Sociology at StanfordUniversity. Her research addresses the role that socialstatus in everyday interaction plays in stratification andinequality, especially in regard to gender. A recent bookisFramed by Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists inthe Modern World(Oxford 2011). A new book project istentatively titled Why Is Status Everywhere?

Documents

Ridgeway, Cecilia - Why Status Matters for Inequality (ASR)