ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is on gendered processes of service-class formation, which I regard as an issue worthy of further sociological debate. The substantive focus is historical, and two conceptual issues are highlighted. First, the relatively under-theorized status of the family within sociological accounts of class formation, and secondly the a priori, taken-for-granted status of the structure of occupational positions, that provides the raw material for charting class maps and deducing statements about socio-demographic and socio-political class formation, and about social closure. The second of these issues forms the central concern of this chapter, as it is the specifically gendered processes and mechanisms embedded in the occupational structure with which I am preoccupied. I shall argue that we might usefully work with a third dimension of class formation, which I shall call the socio-structural, in order to instate gendered processes into historical and contemporary analyses of service-class formation. Specifically in relation to the issues of service-class formation, I shall suggest that a more adequate definition of the service class is possible if we uncover the gendered dynamics embedded in the historical formation of the classic service class.
