Ascribed Status Versus Achieved Status
Ascribed status is the social status a person is given when he or she is born into a status from birth and assumes the class role later in life. People born into families with wealth, for example, are considered to have ascribed social statuses from birth. In the U.S. specifically, race/ethnic differences and gender can create basis for ascribed statuses.
Achieved status is acquired based on merit, skills, abilities, and actions. Examples of achieved status include being a doctor or even being a criminal—the status then determines a set of behaviors and expectations for the individual.
Read more about this topic: Social Transformation
Famous quotes containing the words ascribed, status and/or achieved:
“Saul was very angry, for this saying displeased him. He said, -They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands; what more can he have but the kingdom? So Saul eyed David from that day on.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 18:8-9.
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“Happiness lies outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one’s goal, not self-absorption. The male, capable of only the latter, makes a virtue of an irremediable fault and sets up self-absorption, not only as a good but as a Philosophical Good.”
—Valerie Solanas (b. 1940)