A new wave of research shows how working-class young men are changing their behaviour. But some remain hostile to the term “toxic masculinity” and see it as a vehicle for shaming men.
A taxi rank marshal sprays hand sanitiser on a commuter wearing a mask as a preventive measure as she arrives at the Wanderers taxi rank in Johannesburg.
Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images
Reactions in South Africa give little reason for hope that the virus will bring people closer together or trigger more energetic action against poverty.
The Oluwole Urban Market near Marina in Lagos. Being middle class is more than just being a consumer.
Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye
We should be wary of simplified and sweeping explanations about the scope for potential social and political reforms the middle classes can promote.
Because the threshold for the Medicare levy exemption is based on family income, the reform will reinforce the move towards higher effective tax rates on low income second earners in a family.
Joe Castro/AAP
With its recent budget changes, the government is proposing a rise in marginal tax rates across a wide band of middle incomes and a marginal tax rate cut for the top.
The middle class concept in Africa has remained vague and limited to number crunching. The minimum threshold for entering it in monetary terms was critically vulnerable to a setback into poverty.
Most South Africans need serious financial support to make it through university.
GCIS/Flickr
One of President Barack Obama’s main goals this year, as laid out in both his 2015 budget and State of the Union address, is to provide relief to the middle class. The divergent responses to two of his…
Lad culture, and the sexism that comes along with it, is a real problem at British universities.
Danny Lawson/PA Archive
The world media cognoscenti have been on a crusade recently against a particular brand of misogyny. And their campaign has achieved some results. Controversial comedian Daniel O’Reilly just announced that…
We need to talk.
Black mother and child via Danie Nel/Shutterstock
One in three people in Britain describe themselves as being very or a little racially prejudiced, according to a recent British Social Attitudes Survey. How are middle-class black families coping with…
Happy parenting won’t necessarily get you into Oxbridge.
Parenting via Goodluz/Shutterstock
Britain is quickly turning into a nation characterised by an obscene and unsustainable wealth gap, according to a new report on social mobility. Yet behind the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s…
For decades, child-care advice claimed that motherhood was a natural quality: the task of the parenting expert, it was claimed, was to help mothers to realise their “natural” mothering potential. In practice…
Punching a hole through privilege.
Ben Birchall/PA Archive
England’s 164 state grammar schools form a distinctive but controversial part of the nation’s education system. These schools are distinctive in terms of their high levels of performance – one consequence…
At what price? Moving house is just one strategy parents use to get kids into good schools.
PA
One in three professional parents with children under 16 has moved their family to a new area solely because of the quality of its schools – and nearly a fifth have moved to be in a specific school’s catchment…
Designer shopping in China can lead to an experience like no other.
Flickr/Gadgetdan
China’s phenomenal economic growth during the last three decades has significantly altered its pattern of social stratification. One of the most equal countries in the world has become one of the most…
Director of Centre for Postgraduate Studies, Rhodes University & Visiting Research Professor in Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, Rhodes University