Social inequality results in a lack of access to opportunity, services, and protection in a society. Political inequality exists when some groups have limited opportunity to participate in the political process. Voting rights, freedom of speech or assembly might be curtailed. Distribution of political resources often prevent individuals of some groups from running for office or supporting candidates. We also see political inequality when powerful members of society exert unequal influence over decisions made by political bodies.

Social inequality also extends to the extent of property rights that one has, access to education, health care, quality housing, traveling, transportation, vacationing and other social goods and services, quality of family and neighborhood life, occupation, and job satisfaction. Often life expectancies shift based on social inequalities. With increasing importance, social inequality also relates to the environment. This is experienced as differences in access to natural resources, usable land, parks or freshwater. It also means differences in how people are affected by environmental risks and hazards, such as air or water pollution. As solutions to our environmental issues are made available, differences exist in access to those solutions.

3.7.1 Connections: Inequality Between Nations and Inequality Within Nations

Improvements have been made over the last thirty years in reducing inequality between nations. However, we know that within-country inequality is greater than thirty years ago. Low-income countries, especially in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa experience much wider within-country inequality than rich countries (World Bank 2016).

When we look at long-range trends we can see that inequality between countries started decreasing at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Within-country inequality, on the contrary, grew especially during the last decades (World Bank 2016).

The reasons for inequality increasing within countries but decreasing between countries is of course complex and debated. One connection that some scholars make is that high income countries have more resources to bring education and health care to their remote rural areas than low income countries (Permanyer and Smits 2020).

Some scholars point to nations lacking the kind of labor markets, plus access to skills and capital that give people of all backgrounds a chance to earn a decent living. Access to education is important, as is how specialized a country’s industry offerings are. Market regulations, good governance, and labor market reforms are equally important. For example,  Brazil and Mexico have supported poorer citizens by implementing minimum wages laws, plus progressive tax and benefit policies (Gradín et al. 2021).

3.7.2 The One Percent, Global Inequality, and Gender

Sociologists and other professionals have been studying both types of global inequality within and between countries for decades. Recently, however, an extreme concentration of wealth has developed among fewer than 500 people in the world. In 2019, the world’s billionaires—only 2,153 people—had more wealth than 4.6 billion people (Coffey 2020). Together, they have been coined the one-percent; those at the top of the income and wealth distributions in the world. What does that mean for our understanding of global inequality?

Please watch the 3.5-minute video, “Global Wealth Inequality: What you never knew you never knew.” It’s published by the activist collective, The Rules, and describes that concentration of wealth and how wealth is transferred from poor countries to rich countries (figure 3.26).

Figure 3.26. Global Wealth Inequality – What you never knew you never knew [YouTube Video]

In Oxfam’s report, “Time to Care” the organization presents inequality with an intersectional lens that focuses on the one percent and gender. The report shows that our current economies enable a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes at the expense of ordinary people and particularly poor women and girls. The report explains the degree of inequality in this way:

The 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa…This great divide is based on a flawed and sexist economic system that values the wealth of the privileged few, mostly men, more than the billions of hours of the most essential work – the unpaid and underpaid care work done primarily by women and girls around the world (Coffey 2020).

3.7.3 The Feminization of Poverty

In almost all societies, women have higher rates of poverty than men. More women and girls live in poor conditions, receive inadequate healthcare, bear the brunt of malnutrition and inadequate drinking water, and so on. This situation goes back decades and led University of Michigan sociologist Diana Pearce to coin the term feminization of poverty in 1978.

Throughout the 1990s, while overall poverty rates were rising, especially in peripheral nations, the rates of impoverishment increased for women nearly 20 percent more than for men (Mogadham 2005). More recently, as extreme poverty rates continue to fall, women still make up a disproportionate amount of the world’s poor. Gender differences are sometimes difficult to discern in international poverty data, but researchers have undertaken efforts to define the makeup of those affected by poverty. Of people aged 25-34, the world has 122 women living in poverty for every 100 men living in poverty. The world’s elderly below the poverty line are also more likely to be women (World Bank 2018).

Why is this happening? While many variables affect women’s poverty, research has identified three causes:

1. The expansion in the number of households headed by women
2. Inequalities and biases against women that occur within households
3. The implementation of neoliberal economic policies around the world (Mogadham 2005).

We’ll look further into neoliberalism in Chapter 4. It’s ​​a political and economic philosophy that emphasizes free trade, deregulation, globalization, and a reduction in government spending.

While women are living longer and healthier lives today compared to ten years ago, around the world many women are denied basic rights, particularly in the workplace. In peripheral nations, they accumulate fewer assets, farm less land, make less money, and face restricted civil rights and liberties. When women are able to attain higher levels of education, they account for significant economic growth within their nations (OECD 2012). However, they are often undereducated and lack access to credit needed to start small businesses. A wide range of organizations undertake programs or provide support in order to improve opportunity, safety, education, equality, and financial outcomes for women.