Abstract
The ‘Woman question’ in stratification research has become an increasing concern in the recent decades. The controversy between Goldthorpe and his opponents during the 80s reveals that the major issue there is not how women are incorporated in the conventional class analysis, but whether a new theoretical scheme can substitute the conventional scheme so that women's situation in contemporary industrial societies be able to be analysed adequately. Both the collectivist view and the individualist view on class concept have difficulties in dealing with women's situation without fundamentally revising the research program of class study. The social closure theory which intends to integrate the class theory with gender, racial, or other social cleavages also fails to fulfill the intention. This paper suggests a new way of analysing the women's situation in stratification research.
