Class Action

Class…what image comes to mind as I write this word?

I used to tell my teenage daughter that men really respected “class” more than “ass”.  She would look at me like she was both embarrassed that I even expressed that lecture in those terms like…"why in the world are you even telling me this?”  Of course my message was all about having respect for her body and using her feminine power in a responsible rather than hormonal way.

The word “class” however, does indeed have multiple meanings. It can mean a lesson, a lecture or tutorial. It can mean a sense of style, taste or elegance.  However, the most stigmatizing definition of our time is that of rank, grade, or societal status. 

My unrelenting passion as a woman is to educate women about class. To breakthrough very old stereotypes and showcase a new frontier of class in the American culture. 

First let me clarify what I mean by class.  For as long as this planet has been in existence there has been a “class system".  I could complicate the description, but for simplicity sake it has been about income, power and lifestyle. It has been about the “haves” and the “have not's”; the weak versus the strong.  It has been about where you live, what education you have been able to acquire, and what level of earnings power you have been able to inherit, marry or achieve. 

Statistically, classes are broken up into segments like; the lower class (5%); the working class (46%); the middle class (46%); and the upper class (3%).

About 2/3 of Americans are working-class, lower income or lower-middle-class. Fewer than one in ten Americans remain low-income for a generation or more, although many working-class people spend part of their lives in poverty.  About 3% of Americans are owning-class and almost a third of Americans are professional middle-class. 

I recently asked 25 female entrepreneurs/business owners, what their image of a “working class” woman was. The answers were all very telling.   Most of the answers were reflective of the industrial age, stay at home moms and low income, laborious work.  I interjected an income threshold of between $25K and $75K gross income as a guideline (by design) with yet more interesting comments.

The purpose of this exercise was to garner information other than my own perception and to actually confirm what I already knew based on my life experience and due diligence on the subject.

The American economy is 90% powered by the working class and middle class workers.  So, if 57% of the workforce are women,  that means that "main street" women hold the ultimate power as a unit to change not only the direction of our economy, but the future for women worldwide.

Class has always been about a station in life that people were meant to occupy because …well, it has always been that way.  After all, if you were born a woman (strike one) in a blue collar family with no formal education, your chances of becoming a debutant were slim to none.   The women in the 3% have either inherited wealth, married wealth or worked their tails off to get to the top of the totem pole placing them yet a very precarious position in terms of class as a woman (it's still a man's world).

I am going to step outside norm of academia and say that the class system for American Women in the 21st Century is a false narrative.  You see, we all adopt our circumstances when either required to or relent to. 

I accept that the Upper Class (3%) relish the income and lifestyle they live with no personal contempt; but I cannot accept that the working/middle class (90%) continue to  muddle along as if they had no other option!

The irony in the question asked of the 25 women I surveyed relative to the image of working/middle class women was that financially, almost 90% of the respondents were in the very category they were describing, yet none referred to themselves as such.  I would bet (and I am not a betting person), that 25 out of the 25 women that I questioned were, in-fact, working class women resigned to their own social status.

So, let me conclude with a question. Are we truly accepting of the income/lifestyle that we are living today as women due to lack of opportunity or have we just surrendered to what has always been?  The 3% albeit admirable and same gender, will not be the hand-up that will bring about the change that working class women so desperately need; they reside in a club of their own. 

Let the legacy of main street American women be the largest class action unification the world has ever seen!