Minorities, Women, and Children

Minorities, Women, and Children

Minorities, women, and children are often the target of specific social policies. A minority group is a sociological category within a demographic that is differentiated and defined by the social majority. That is, those who hold the majority of positions of social power in a society.

The differentiation can be based on one or more observable human characteristics that include ethnicity, race, gender, wealth, or sexual orientation. Usage of the term is applied to various situations and civilizations within history, despite its popular wrongful association with a numerical, statistical minority. In the social sciences, the term minority is used to refer to categories of persons who hold few positions of social power .

Minorities

The Civil Rights Movement attempted to increase rights for minorities within the U.S.

While in most societies, numbers of men and women are roughly equal, the status of women as a subordinate group has led some (especially within feminist movements) to equate them with minorities. Children can also be understood as a minority group in these terms, as they are economically non-active and not necessarily given all the rights of adult citizens.

One major, particularly controversial policy targeting minority groups is affirmative action. This can be, for example, a government program to provide immigrant or minority groups who primarily speak a marginalized language with extra teaching in the majority language, so they are better able to compete for places at universities or for jobs. These may be considered necessary because the minority group in question is socially disadvantaged. Another form of affirmative action is quotas, where a percentage of places at university, or in employment in public services, are set aside for minority groups (including women) because a court has found that there has been a history of exclusion as it pertains to certain groups in certain sectors of society.