Why Status Matters for Inequality

TLDR

Status is a micro-motive for behavior, as significant as money and power. The paper argues that incorporating status—inequality of esteem and respect—into analyses of social inequality is essential. Status reinforces resource and power inequality by creating cultural beliefs that certain groups are superior, which bias workplace evaluations, preferences, and resistance, thereby channeling higher-status members into positions of advantage and embedding group differences into institutional structures. Status is a central mechanism sustaining durable social inequality across gender, race, and class.

Abstract

To understand the mechanisms behind social inequality, this address argues that we need to more thoroughly incorporate the effects of status—inequality based on differences in esteem and respect—alongside 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 resource and power inequality by transforming it into cultural status beliefs about group differences regarding who is “better” (esteemed and competent). But cultural status beliefs about which groups are “better” constitute group differences as independent dimensions 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 of competence and suitability for authority, bias associational preferences, and evoke resistance to status challenges from low-status group members. These effects accumulate to direct members of higher status groups toward positions of resources and power while holding back lower status group members. Through these processes, status writes group differences such as gender, 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 of inequality based on social differences.