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Class, status and party have been taken as the keystones of Weberian stratification studies. The difficulties of operationalising the concept of status has been noted by many writers. This paper examines the concept of status and rejects both the widely accepted definitional and operational bases of the concept. An alternative definition is suggested and a model of status awareness and status interaction is developed which allows effective operationalisation of the concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a research report, which focuses on the delinquent behavior of girls in South Australia in the year 1975-76. In western industrialized society girls tend to be more closely supervised than boys and are taught to be passive and domestically oriented. This socialization process would result in the internalization of a limited number of socially legitimated behavior patterns, which would effectively constrain the range of activities, actually engaged in by girls. The social expectation for girls to comply with stricter moral standards would also result in a greater level of conformity among girls generally. Differential socialization, involving girls in more passive roles than boys, and allowing girls a more circumscribed range of social activity does in part explain the differential offending rates of boys and girls. However, the conceptualization of girls' ability to participate in delinquent activity as being structurally restricted is only a recent development. However it is clear that the development of a new conceptual framework for the examination of female delinquency is essential.