Abstract

This article explores the meanings of social class for American women who have experienced downward mobility after divorce. These women experienced social class as a process of negotiation, and subjective elements often predominated over objective criteria. However, serious changes in their material reality subsequently forced redefinition of class identity. While divorced women sometimes identify with other women in the same situation, this identification is often mitigated by the effects of stigma and cognitive processes of differentiation, inhibiting the development of a collective group identity. Theoretically, the study showed that social class identity needs to be seen as changing over time, at times existing in a state of conflict between subjective identification and objective economic status, rather than as a neatly resolved or static social identity.