The Barratt Simplified Measure of Social Status (BSMSS)

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

Indiana State University

June 14, 2012

This measure is built on the work of Hollingshead (1957, 1975) who devised a simple measure of Social Status based on marital status, retired/employed status (retired individuals used their last occupation) educational attainment, and occupational prestige.  This is a measure of social status, which is a proxy for socio-economic status.  This is not a measure of social class, which is best seen as a cultural identity.  An individual’s or their parents’ educational attainment and occupational prestige can change over their life. Social class, especially social class of origin identity, stays with each person throughout their life similar to gender identity and ethnic identity.

Two important changes have been made to the Hollingshead Four Factor measure of social status as it was transformed into the BSMSS.  First, the list of occupations has been updated based on the work of Davis, Smith, Hodge, Hakao, and Treas (1991) who calculated occupational prestige ratings from the 1989 general social survey.  Hollingshead originally had 9 occupational groups, so the 1989 data was divided into 9 groups.  To develop the dividing lines between the 9 groups the distribution of the "Prestige Score" was examined closely.  Scores ranged from 86 for Physician to 17 for Miscellaneous Food Preparation Occupations, however, below Physician there was a gap of eleven points until the next occupation of Lawyer, and 30 occupations ranked as a 74.  Clearly the "Prestige Score" would not lend itself to a readily apparent set of 9 divisions.

It was decided to use a 6 or 7 point spread for each of the 9 divisions, using judgments for the dividing line based on the fall-off, or scree, of the plotted scores.  Once the 9 divisions had been made raters were asked to identify typical, or common, occupations from within each group to use as the descriptors in the instrument.

The second change was to recognize the generational shift in social status. The BSMSS accounts for an individual's parent's educational attainment and occupational prestige and combines that with the individual's own family's educational attainment and occupational prestige.  An arbitrary weighting was given of 2:1 for Individual's family scores to parent's family scores.  Social class mobility, in the US, is a fact of life.  As with all identities growth is an aggregating process, so we all carry identities from our family of origin into our attained identity of the moment.  The choice of a 2:1 weighting recognized that the individual's current identity is the most important.

Hollingshead's original conceptualization of educational attainment has been maintained faithfully, as has his weighting of educational attainment to occupational prestige of 3:5.

The BSMSS does not produce a measure of SES in any absolute sense.  A discussion of the larger issues of SES is not the point here; suffice it to say that no classic definition of SES, or even the larger issue of social class, exists.  The score that results from this measure is ordinal only. It is sufficient for regression analysis or for creating social status groups based on the data collected.  The BSMSS is not designed to identify any individual or group as belonging to any particular social class, or socio-economic status, or social status.

Note please that assumptions about a mother’s or father’s contribution to an individual’s social class are Hollingshead’s. Stay-at-home mothers are not included in this calculation even though we know that mothers are an important influence on children.

Psychometric properties: Reliability is not an appropriate question to evaluate the BSMSS because this is not a scale.  Validity is appropriate as a question and as with all demographic questions the researcher must determine if the question does in fact reflect the question being asked.  Essentially the BSMSS provides a demographic question to help frame an understanding of the individual participants in a study. 

For permission to use the BSMSS or for a list of articles and dissertations that have used the BSMSS please contact the author at will dot barratt at indstate dot edu.  This material had originally be posted on the author's campus website and has now been moved here to in order to adapt to emerging technology and server space.

EDIT - SES is not social class

References

Davis, J., Smith, T., Hodge, R., Nakao, K., & Treas, J. (1991). Occupational prestige ratings from the 1989 general social survey. Ann Arbor MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Hollingshead, August B. (1957). Two factor index of social position. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Hollingshead, A. B. (1975). Four factor index of social status. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

   

This material is not available for use without permission from the author.  

This is not Open Source.

Permission will be freely given for research and there is a cost for commercial/business use.  

Email will dot barratt at indstate dot edu with a description of your study and assurances that you have appropriate approvals for your research.  

The Barratt Simplified Measure of Social Status (BSMSS)

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

Circle the appropriate number for your Mother’s, your Father’s, your Spouse / Partner's, and your level of school completed and occupation. If you grew up in a single parent home, circle only the score from your one parent. If you are neither married nor partnered circle only your score. If you are a full time student circle only the scores for your parents.

Level of School Completed	Mother	Father	Spouse	You
Less than 7th grade	3	3	3	3
Junior high / Middle school (9th grade)	6	6	6	6
Partial high school (10th or 11th grade)	9	9	9	9
High school graduate	12	12	12	12
Partial college (at least one year)	15	15	15	15
College education	18	18	18	18
Graduate degree	21	21	21	21

Circle the appropriate number for your Mother’s, your Father’s , your Spouse / Partner's, and your occupation. If you grew up in a single parent home, use only the score from your parent. If you are not married or partnered circle only your score. If you are still a full-time student only circle the scores for your parents. If you are retired use your most recent occupation.

Occupation	Mother	Father	Spouse	You
Day laborer, janitor, house cleaner, farm worker, food counter sales, food preparation worker, busboy.	5	5	5	5
Garbage collector, short-order cook, cab driver, shoe sales, assembly line workers, masons, baggage porter.	10	10	10	10
Painter, skilled construction trade, sales clerk, truck driver, cook, sales counter or general office clerk.	15	15	15	15
Automobile mechanic, typist, locksmith, farmer, carpenter, receptionist, construction laborer, hairdresser.	20	20	20	20
Machinist, musician, bookkeeper, secretary, insurance sales, cabinet maker, personnel specialist, welder.	25	25	25	25
Supervisor, librarian, aircraft mechanic, artist and artisan, electrician, administrator, military enlisted personnel, buyer.	30	30	30	30
Nurse, skilled technician, medical technician, counselor, manager, police and fire personnel, financial manager, physical, occupational, speech therapist.	35	35	35	35
Mechanical, nuclear, and electrical engineer,  educational administrator, veterinarian, military officer, elementary, high school and special education teacher,	40	40	40	40
Physician, attorney, professor, chemical and aerospace engineer, judge, CEO, senior manager, public official, psychologist, pharmacist, accountant.	45	45	45	45

Level of School Completed Scoring

1	If you grew up with both parents add Mother + Father and divide by 2. If you grew up with one parent enter that score to the right.
2	If you are married or partnered add Spouse + You and divide by 2. If you live alone enter Your score to the right. If you are a full-time student leave this blank.
3	Double your score from line 2. If you are a full-time student leave this blank.
4	If you are a full-time student enter only your parents’ score. Add line 1 and line 3 then divide by 3 (three) for a TOTAL EDUCATION Score should be between 3 and 21

Occupation Scoring

1	If you grew up with both parents add Mother + Father and divide by 2. If you grew up with one parent enter that score to the right.
2	If you are married or partnered add Spouse + You and divide by 2. If you live alone enter Your score to the right. If you are a full-time student leave this blank.
3	Double your score from line 2. If you are a full-time student leave this blank.
4	If you are a full-time student enter only your parents’ score. Add line 1 and line 3 then divide by 3 (three) for TOTAL OCCUPATION Score should be between 5 and 45

TOTAL Score:

Add TOTAL EDUCATION + TOTAL OCCUPATION: Score should be between 8 and 66

This material is protected under US copyright law and international treaty.  

This material is not available for use without permission from the author.  

This is not Open Source.

Permission will be freely given for research and there is a cost for commercial/business use.  

Email will dot barratt at indstate dot edu with a description of your study and assurances that you have appropriate approvals for your research. 

Google Scholar has a list of citations for this material.

Author contact - will dot barratt at indstate dot edu

Social class is hidden in plain sight

Will Barratt, Ph.D.
Department of Educational Leadership
Indiana State University

Believe what you know.  Social class is everywhere; it is within us, it surrounds us, and we all co-create it daily.  The social class divide only exists because of our collaboration.  Like the ninja, like the purloined letter, social class is hidden in plain sight.  We all see social class, we all participate in co-creating it, but we somehow make what we see invisible. 

“What does social class look like?” is not the key question here because it looks a little different for each of us.  The key question here is: “Why don’t we see social class?” 

In order to celebrate and work with social class we need to see it, claim it, and own it.  What prevents each of us from seeing social class?  What filter obscures our view of the obvious?

We see the designer purses, we see social hierarchy, and we see prestige colleges, clothing, and cars.  We each participate in the co-construction of prestige within our own lives.  We each know our place within the work, play, local, regional, and global hierarchy.  We each have a social class identity.  We each participate in celebrations and events that are authentic to our social class of origin and current felt social class.  We each have a social class culture with shared foods, attitudes, symbols, events, norms, dress, music, attitudes toward education, and much more.  We know social class in our lives, but we don’t believe what we know.

The reasons for our social class blindness are not cognitive; we all cognitively see social class cues.  The reasons for our social class blindness are emotional; the reasons are fear and ignorance.  You will have social class blindness reasons of your own, but we all share fear and ignorance.  How each of us manages our fear and how each of us manages our ignorance is a test of our character. 

Fear

Fear is the mind killer, fear leads to the dark side, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself . . . we do not lack for pithy statements on fear.  Fear is personal.  What do you fear in social class that makes you blind to it?  Naming your fear, owning it, and confronting that fear are the first steps to overcoming it.

Ignorance

I need to constantly confront my ignorance in order to become more effective.  I may have uninformed ignorance, for example I don’t know the poetry of Li Bai.  But, now that I know this about myself I have informed ignorance.  If I don’t take the time to learn his poetry then I have willful ignorance.  I am willfully ignorant about many things, like Li Bai, like bird habitat in North America, like organic chemistry, and that is OK in my life.  I am not willfully ignorant about social class, about gender, or about ethnicity because I try to be an effective world citizen and respect diversity. 

False knowledge is the illusion of knowledge.  False knowledge is the ignorance of accepting prepackaged, preconceived information, or accepting knowledge that is past its expiration date.  False knowledge is believing that I know something because someone told you something once.  False knowledge is dangerous because nothing motivates me to learn what I think I already know.  Why would I add tea to a cup that I believe is already full?  Indeed, why would I believe that the cup of knowledge can ever be filled? 

Knowledge has an expiration date, ignorance is a renewable resource.  Understanding your ignorance, owning it, and confronting are the first steps to overcoming it.

What will you do?

Fear and ignorance are not good reasons to avoid confrontation.  Social class is invisible to us because we do not want to confront it, see it, claim it, own it, and celebrate it.  Overcoming fear and ignorance is the path to seeing, claiming, owning, and celebrating social class. 

Without fear and ignorance social class can no longer hide in plain sight.

Note: I am indebted to Coffman Distinguished Professor Maurice Miller for our conversation about fear and ignorance.  I am indebted to Allport, Clark, and Pettigrew for their book The Nature of Prejudice. 

Celebrate Social Class Diversity

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

Department of Educational Leadership
Indiana State University

Celebrating social class diversity brings us face to face across the divide of our differences.

In the US we celebrate lots of things.  Summer brings an array of nationality and ethnicity festivals and different cities, towns, and neighborhoods vie for the best festival of its type.  These festivals reinforce national and ethnic identity, introduce guests to important cultural practices, and, if it is a great festival, introduce everyone to important foods.  These celebrations bring us face-to-face across the divide of our differences. 

Are there social class celebrations that bring us together?

When my wife and I were doctoral students at The University of Iowa we lived outside the small farming town of Wellman, Iowa.  Our neighbors, Gordon and Lois Schlaubaugh and their sons, took us to the 1980 4^th of July celebration in town.  The celebration featured all of what you would expect, singing the national anthem, a prayer for the hostages in the embassy in Iran, 4H and FFA exhibits, baked goods, local cookbooks for sale, and great homemade food.  There was a tractor pull which was a serious event in Wellman.  Each family cheered for their tractor brand, red or green, reinforcing their brand loyalty. 

I would argue that this 4^th of July event was also a social class celebration, and the Schlaubaughs’ invitation was a welcoming hand of friendship extended across the divide.  Iowa doctoral students and an Iowa Mennonite farm family experienced a moment together.  I don’t know if it was their Mennonite generosity that moved them to invite us, but even now I recall that shared moment.  In their on-going generosity and welcoming hospitality we went out to dinner in towns near-by, we went out for ice cream, and we spent time in their home.  We tried to reciprocate, we brought them things we picked up when the spent the summer in Salzburg, Austria, we sent their kids post cards whenever we travelled, we had a dinner party for the neighborhood, and we pitched in when there was work to be done, like making apple cider with their antique steam powered cider press.  We continue to exchange holiday cards, and we see each other occasionally.

What are social class celebrations?  I would suggest that almost every celebration has social class overtones.  The opera and ZZ Top concerts, demolition derby and Formula 1, dinner out, bowling, prom, and sporting events all have social class overtones.  All of these are social class celebrations of a sort. 

Invite someone who is not like you and welcome them to a celebration that is authentic to your social class of origin. 

Say “Yes” when you are invited to a celebration that is not authentic to your social class of origin or to your current felt social class.

Say “Yes” to welcoming others to your events.  We have all been unwelcomed somewhere and we know where that leads emotionally. 

To welcome someone means to make guests comfortable, to show guests the shared unspoken rules of the event, to comfort guests from too much conflict.  In being social class celebration host you may be surprised at what you learn about your own celebration.  I was placed at a celebration dinner table set with an array of flatware, glasses, and implements of feasting one evening, and I realized from watching my tablemates that they were uncomfortable with the table setting.  Remembering those times when I was confused I did what I could to make them comfortable.  We all had a great evening, bridging the social class table setting divided.

To be a guest in a social class celebration that is not authentic to your social class of origin means to be uncomfortable and to be a host means to be a guide and to make others comfortable. 

If social class is personal, if social class is like any other diversity, then bridging the gap needs to be personal.  It needs to start with you and me, and it needs to start today. 

Google "Celebrate Social Class"

Will Barratt, Ph.D. 

Here is an interesting experiment:  Google “celebrate social class diversity”, make sure to include the quotes. 

After that Google “celebrate social class”.  Try some other variations.  

Try “celebrate [your diversity / ethnicity / nationality here]”.  

Interesting, isn’t it.  

We all need to celebrate social class.  Own social class, claim social class, celebrate social class. 

Emotionality, rationality, social class, and student retention on campus

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

How much of student retention on campus, students choosing to continue enrollment semester to semester and year to year, is an emotional choice and how much is a rational choice?

Do different students, Louise and Larry from the campus lower / minority class contrasted with Misty and Markey from the campus middle / majority class, have different emotional / rational ratios?

Do campus structural and organizational processes offset negative feelings?

What are the emotional reasons that help students to stay?  

Can we give any student an emotional reason to stay?

I am seeking comments and input here.  Yes, I know that this is a US biased question and discussion, and if you have an international perspective please share it. 

Thanks.

Will

Tweet or Facebook this question with a link and add a comment here please. 

Unpacking Social Class Privilege

Will Barratt, Ph.D.
Department of Educational Leadership
Indiana State University

Privilege is one of those ill defined words used in conversations and articles that rarely gets explored.  Privilege typically has a negative connotation, as though being privileged is a bad thing.  It is important that we critically explore this concept and how it is used.  The idea of privilege should be seen in complicated ways from multiple points of view.  We owe a debt to Peggy McIntosh for writing “White privilege: Unpacking the knapsack".  While she was not the first to write about privilege, especially white privilege in the US, she articulated the issue so very well.

Democracy and privilege.  Underlying our concern for privilege in the US is our idea of democracy in the US.  If all people are created equal and endowed equally with inalienable rights then no one should have advantages, benefits, and rights that are not common to all.  This is a laudable ideal and a cornerstone of what US citizens believe about ourselves.  And then we go to work, to school, and to church, none of which are democracies.  We live our lives co-creating inequitable environments that privilege some people and disadvantage others.  We speak in favor of equity while co-creating inequity. That requires some exploration

So, what is privilege?  Simply, privilege is some advantage, benefit, or right that some person or group of people has that other people or groups don’t have.  The origin of the advantage, benefit, or right is a good starting point.  Most forms of privilege, like legal privilege, positional privilege, or social privilege begin as a transaction between people.  Economic privilege begins with having money.

Types of privilege

Legal privilege.  Legal privilege comes from the courts or from the legislature.  You get immunity from prosecution, legal exemption, and other legal privileges through legal action in the judicial branch of the government.  Some people get legal privilege and others don’t.  In TV shows the legal privilege of immunity from prosecution is traded for testifying.  Informal legal privilege is what a police officer may extend to an informant by disregarding minor infractions in trade for information.  You may also get legal privilege by getting a law passed to provide you with an advantage, benefit, or right, that is not for everyone.  For example you may get a tax benefit for the wealthy that is not available for the non-wealthy.

Positional privilege.  If I am a mid-level bureaucrat then I have certain advantages, benefits, and rights that a low-level bureaucrat below me doesn’t have, and fewer advantages, benefits, and rights than a high-level bureaucrat has.  Business people with a high level of positional authority have privileges and corporate perquisites like access to the executive dining area, executive bathrooms, and to the corporate jet.  An individual gets positional privilege from the organization through a transaction.  The positional privileges in the military, where rank is observable through insignia, involve ritualized greetings and obeisance.  Positional privilege is the result of a transaction in an organization giving someone an advantage, right, or benefit that is not available to all.

Positional privilege can be seen as earned privilege.  If you have attained a level in the hierarchy, the assumption is that you earned it.  In reality no organizational hierarchy is a level playing field.  The inequities in organizational hierarchies are complex and an individual’s success in any organization is heavily influenced by a person’s social class of origin.

Social privilege.  This is complicated.  One way to understand social privilege is to look at the source of the privilege.  Social privileging is a transaction between people that is often unconscious and in the background.  Social privilege comes through a social interaction, not a legal or positional interaction and is a chosen of personal behavior giving someone some advantages, benefits or rights that are not available to everyone.  The sources of social privilege are an effective way to differentiate among types of social privilege.  These different sources are important distinctions in the dialog of privilege, but they all reflect the social construction and co-creation of privilege between people.

Cultural norm based social privilege is an interpersonal transaction based on social and cultural norms.  When you give your seat on a bus to someone elderly because that behavior is a social or cultural norm for you then you privilege that elderly person.  You assign them some advantage, benefit, or right that others don’t have.  Respectful behavior, even ritualized respectful behavior, creates social privilege for whoever is receiving the respect.  Similarly, perceived social class prestige is based on cultural norms and assumptions about personal status and prestige in the social hierarchy.  This is socially constructed privilege based on widely accepted social norms within a culture.  Giving and receiving privilege – advantages, benefits, and rights – is a social tradition in all cultures.  The rituals and recipients of cultural norm based social privilege vary from society to society and from culture to culture, but is culturally ubiquitous.

Group membership based social privilege comes from membership in a specific group.  While this can be membership in a campus fraternity or sorority it can also be membership in a gender or ethnicity.  The idea of majority is contextual – being in a group composed only of members of a single fraternity or sorority makes the members a majority and everyone else a nom-member minority.  Being European-American in a mall in Omaha Nebraska places you in the ethnic majority and gets you majority group membership based social privilege.  Exploring Macintosh’s knapsack, much of what she describes as white privilege is majority group social privilege.

Economic privilege.  Money gives you advantages, benefits, and rights, which have defined privilege above, but economic privilege does not come from legal, positional, or social  interactions.  Having money has the same effect as other forms of privilege, it is different process of being privileged, a different type of privilege.  Certainly anyone with money can purchase advantages like first class tickets, or benefits like high priced attorneys.  Certainly people with money can successfully influence legislators to provide them with legal privilege.  Certainly people with money can successfully influence the media to reinforce social norms about deferring to people with economic advantage.  There may be cultural norms about people with economic advantages that affects the interpersonal relationship and results in legal, positional, or social privilege.  Economic privilege can play out interpersonally as social privilege.

The source of legal, positional, or social privilege is transactional.  The source of economic privilege is having money.  Economic privilege does not depend on the source of the money.  Whether the money is inherited, earned, old, or new is largely irrelevant, anyone with money is economically privileged.  This fails to address the question of how much money gives you privilege.  Anyone who has more money than you has more economic privilege than you.  Anyone with less money than you has less economic privilege than you.  Like positional privilege, economic privilege is relative to your status in the hierarchy.

The privilege transaction.  Some people give privilege and some people insist on being given privilege.  Honorifics are example of earned privilege.  Using titles on a US campus is interesting.  There are regional variations in using titles, there are variations based on where people received their Ph.D., there are social class variations, and academic status variations.  Insisting that others use a degree or positional title on campus is an example of demanded privilege.  This is social privilege masquerading as positional privilege.  Culturally and internationally the use of academic titles varies quite a bit.

Unearned privilege is based on some individual characteristic, like whiteness, or attractiveness, or personal height.  Group membership based social privilege that relies on characteristics like ethnicity or gender is prejudice in action.  “He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.”  This quote, attributed to Barry Switzer, helps illustrate unearned privilege.

Privilege and Social Class

Privilege is both a cause and an effect of social class.  Purchasing designer label positional goods is an example of manipulating perceived prestige to acquire social privilege.  Positional privilege is one of the dominant features of the modern US corporation.  More corporate perquisites come with higher positions.  Position is a mark of occupational success which is one of the ways in which people compete for social status.  Some forms of legal privilege, and all forms of positional and social privilege are about social class.  Economic privilege demonstrated through conspicuous consumption is a traditional marker of social class.

It is important to explore what we mean by privilege and to use it clearly and with integrity.

Gender, ethnicity, and Social Class: Which is more important?

Will Barratt, Ph.D.

Which is more important, gender, ethnicity, or social class?  You can add any of your primary identities to that question.  You can create a ranked list of identity importance if you want.  However, before you write that list you need to think about a few things.

What do you mean by important? 

In the long run, some things will be more important than others.  In the short run, some things will be more important than others.  

Are you interested in what is important to you?  Are you interested in what is important to others?

Are you interested in statistical trends?  Are you interested in messy every-day exceptions?

I am a person and I am interested in the dailyness of life.  For me, this means exploring how my identities play out moment to moment and day to day in my life.  For me, this means exploring my interactions with other people.  Yes, I know that my identities affect what and how I perceive, think, and act when I am alone, but I want to explore important and to me that is the interpersonal environment. 

So, which is more important in the interpersonal environment; gender, ethnicity, or social class?  

I need to look at both sides of any interaction - social class as important to me and social class as important to the person I am interacting with - for convenience a two person system is a good place to start. From my side there is my gender and their gender, my ethnicity and their ethnicity, my social class and their social class in the interaction. Similarly, the other person has the same considerations.  A two person system gets complicated quickly.

In the interaction between you and me in this two person system the question comes back; Important for what?

Well, the good news is that a lot of people have researched the interpersonal interaction world and found a consistent pattern.  These references are all dated, probably because the research questions got answered.  

Carter (1954) found two principal interpersonal factors and a group facilitation factor; Individual prominence and achievement (which corresponds to power), Sociability (which corresponds to love-hate or support) and a third factor particular to the research conducted; aiding attainment by the group (a group facilitation factor as Carter was studying group behaviors).  Leary (1957), in research setting the basis for the diagnosis of personality through interpersonal behavior, found two principal factors; Love-Hate (support) and Dominance-Submission (power).  Borgatta, Cottrell and Mann (1958) found two principal factors concerning relations and three minor factors; Individual Assertiveness (power), Sociability (love-hate), Manifest Intelligence, Task Interest and Manifest Emotionality.  Schutz (1958), in the original development of his FIRO instrument found what he labeled Control, Affection, and Inclusion, which later became the scales on the FIRO-B.  Schaeffer (1956) studied maternal behavior and concluded that "two major dimensions of maternal behavior can be isolated in all studies; these can be labeled Love vs. Hostility and Autonomy vs. Control".  Finally, Foa (1961) determined that there were two principal factors of interpersonal relations; Dominance-Submission and Love-Hostility.

Notice the pattern?  A simple answer is that interpersonal relations, based on this factor analytic research, can be described using three primary variables:  Power, Task Orientation, and Support.

So, is gender, ethnicity, or social class more important for power, task orientation, and support in the interpersonal world?  A good question is hard to come by and for me this is a good question.

Social class is social status and social status is a source of power, at least it is one among several sources is power.  Social status can also be seen as a measure of power.

Which identity is most important for power?  Well, gender, and ethnicity, and height, and attractiveness have all been shown to affect the power dynamics in relationships.  Note please that these are observable sources of status, unlike religion or sexual orientation.

Here is your quest:  As you go through a typical day pay attention to what most affects the power in interpersonal relations during the day.  Also pay attention to the task dimension, and to the support dimension.  Does your gender affect the power in the interactions more than your social class?  Daily interactions are messy, which is what makes this such a good problem, and separating out what affects what is tough.  Isolating social class status from work authority status is hard, so try to pay attention to how you interact with peers of the same gender.

I have had many people over the years follow this quest.  The overwhelming answer is that power comes from social status and social class much more than it does from gender and ethnicity.  I have not collected this as data, sorry.

So in the limited question of which is more important in interpersonal interaction, using power, task orientation, and support as variables, that social class is the most important.

References

Borgatta, E. F., Cotterell, L. S., & Mann, J. M. (1958). The spectrum of individual interaction characteristics: An interdimensional analysis. Psychological Reports, 4, 279-319.
Carter, L.F. (1954). Evaluating the performance of individuals as members of small groups. Personnel Psychology, 7, 477-484.
Foa, U. G. (1961). Convergences in the analysis of the structure of interpersonal behavior. Psychological Review, 68, 341-353.
Leary, T. (1957). Interpersonal diagnosis of personality. New York: Ronald Press.
Schaefer, E. S. (1956). A circumplex model for maternal behavior. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 226-235.
Schutz, W. C. (1958). FIRO: A three dimensional theory of interpersonal behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

keywords: power social class status gender ethnicity