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This text focuses on the theory of class as it relates to women. It debates questions such as: how do women define themselves in terms of social class and why?; is definition important or not?; what part does education play in our understanding of class?; and how does class affect relationships?

US workers, in contrast to European workers, never developed separate social & political formations, trade union organizations, or ideologies of power unified by class because they did not share a unified history of peasantry or feudalism, & had considerable social mobility. It could be argued that class might play a more important role in the future, as incomes decline, social mobility spirals downward, & differences between the two major political parties evaporate. However, for class issues to shape US politics, the labor unions would have to challenge the value structure of the whole society. 4 References. M. Pflum

"We study how class size and class composition affect the academic and labor market performance of college students, two crucial policy questions given the secular increase in college enrollment. Our identification strategy relies on the random assignment of students to teaching classes. We find that a one standard deviation increase in class-size results in a 0.1 standard deviation deterioration of the average grade. Further, the effect is heterogeneous as it is stronger for males and lower income students. Also, the effects of class composition in terms of gender and ability appear to be inverse U-shaped. Finally, a reduction of 20 students (one standard deviation) in one's class size has a positive effect on monthly wages of about 80 Euros (115 USD)or 6% over the average"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Recent critiques of the usefulness of the concept of class (Pahl 1989; Clark and Lipset 1991) have developed into more specific criticisms of the lack of theory underlying `class analysis' as practised by Goldthorpe and his associates (Pahl 1993; Rose 1993). In this paper we argue that an adequate theory of class needs to show why classes, defined in the particular way they are, have some claim to be a basis of social power of sufficient importance to justify the emphasis placed on them by class analysis. To answer this question requires that two things be demonstrated: first, that there is an association between class and a range of outcomes; and, second, that the mechanisms giving rise to such associations be specified. Class analysis has little difficulty in answering the first requirement but very great difficulties in satisfactorily addressing the second. In discussing these problems we seek to suggest fruitful future directions for the project of class analysis.

The meaning of class, like many other things, is conferred by historically specific chains of signification or discourses that constitute the identity and significance of class as a social reality. Therefore, much of the conceptual purchase and explanatory power of class will be lost when the concept is taken out of the theories in which it is embedded. This is exactly the case with the use of class in the People's Republic of China in the last two or three decades, when the Marxist approach to class has been rejected and 'forgotten' by the social analysts and the Chinese Communist Party-even though the latter continues to pay lip service to Marxism-in favour of alternative concepts, methodologies and theories that sidestep class relations. The point of departure here is not so much sociological as political-ideological. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

In rejecting both arguments of the 'death of class', and the increasingly minimalist positions of class traditionalists, a newer generation of class theorists have transformed the scope and analytical framework of class analysis; inflating 'class' to include social and cultural formations, reconfiguring the causal model that has underpinned class analysis, and abandoning the notion of distinct class identities or groups, focusing instead on individualized hierarchical differentiation. There are problems with transforming 'class' in this fashion, although the difficulty lies not in the departures from traditional class theory, but rather in what is retained. The uneasy relationship between older and newer aspects of 'class' within renewed class theory means the wider implications of inequality considered as individualized hierarchy (rather than as 'class') have not been fully explored. The debate on class identities (an important example of this new form of class analysis) illustrates these difficulties, and shows that issues of hierarchy extend well beyond issues of 'class'.