Gender and Social Capital

Brenda O'Neill, Elisabeth Gidengil

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135416553
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The volume brings together a stellar group of contributors who examine the social capital thesis by means of four different approaches: theoretical, historical, comparative, and empirical. In the end, this book will serve to answer two fundamental questions which have hitherto been neglected: What can a gendered analysis tell us about social capital? And what can social capital tell us about women and politics?

1

Removing Rose Colored Glasses

Examining Theories of Social Capital through a Gendered Lens

ELISABETH GIDENGIL and BRENDA O’NEILL

Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community has been one of the most influential contributions to the social sciences in the past decade. The book makes a powerful case that “our economy, our democracy, and even our health and happiness depend on adequate stocks of social capital.”¹ In Putnam’s conception, social capital “refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.”² The core idea is that networks of formal and informal sociability foster relations of trust and reciprocity. These levels of trust and reciprocity are the capital from which further assets are produced, namely the political engagement of citizens. Putnam argues that technological and social changes since the mid-1970s have led to a decline in social capital. This diminishing stock of social capital has in turn translated into reduced levels of civic engagement, less trust in traditional institutions of government, and an erosion of that spirit of cooperation and mutual tolerance that is essential to the solution of collective problems.

According to Putnam, women have played a particularly important role in creating and sustaining stocks of social capital. However, gender dynamics have figured in this body of research in only very limited and partial ways. Feminist scholars have remarked on the “curious silence”³ on the subject within the debates over social capital and have noted that much of the literature is “gender blind.”⁴ And yet to date, there has been relatively little sustained critical analysis of the social capital concept as it relates to women. Accordingly, this volume brings together leading scholars in the fields of gender, politics, and society to evaluate Putnam’s social capital thesis from a gendered perspective. It sets out to answer two key questions: What can a gendered analysis tell us about social capital and what can social capital theory tell us about gender and politics?

Gendered Critiques of Social Capital

Putnam’s work has certainly had something to say about gender, but gender has only been of interest to the extent that it might play a role in explaining the decline of social capital or else in replenishing its dwindling stocks. Initially, Putnam suggested that women’s entry into the paid work force was responsible for the decline of social capital in the United States; “the decline in organizational involvement in recent years is concentrated among women.”⁵ As women moved into the paid work force, their membership in voluntary associations fell off. Although entry into the workforce provides greater opportunity for making new connections and becoming involved in a larger number of organizations, at “the same time it decreases time available for exploring these opportunities.”⁶ Less time and energy, it was argued, meant that women produced smaller stocks of social capital than they had in the past. Putnam has since, however, retreated from that initial position. In Bowling Alone, he acknowledges that women typically spend more time on associational involvements than men, regardless of whether they work full-time, part-time, or remain at home, and he explicitly disclaims any notion that “working women are ‘to blame’ for our civic disengagement.”⁷ In Britain, meanwhile, Peter Hall argued that women’s increased participation in the paid work force, along with greater access to higher education and changing gender roles more generally, has been responsible for an increase in their associational involvement that has offset the decline in men’s.⁸ However, neither Putnam nor Hall has been particularly concerned with the distinct organizations that women and men join, the roles that they hold within them, whether they derive the same benefits from their stocks of social capital, and whether differences in the nature of their social capital are associated with differences in the uses to which it is put. Notably lacking has been any exploration of the ways in which gender inequalities and asymmetries in power affect the accumulation and investment of social capital.

It is not simply that the social capital literature has been relatively blind to the existence and implications of gender inequalities. Gendered critiques reveal that, far from being gender-neutral, there has been a distinct male bias. Vivien Lowndes’s starting point was Peter Hall’s claim that it is largely women’s growing community involvement that has sustained social capital in Britain.⁹ In restricting his examination of gender dynamics to membership of associations, she argues, Hall presented only a very partial portrait of women’s role in maintaining Britain’s stock of social capital. Her examination of men’s and women’s involvement in voluntary work and networks of informal sociability reveals clear evidence of gender-specific patterns of activity. Men are much more likely than women to spend their leisure time in sports’ activities and to engage in voluntary work related to sports and recreation. Women, meanwhile, are more likely than men to undertake voluntary work related to health, social services, and education. They also typically devote much more time than men to visiting friends.

Lowndes underscores the tendency of social capital analyses to focus on activities that are typically male-dominated. Hall’s analysis is a case in point: he presents detailed information on trends in time spent at the pub, but has virtually nothing to say on trends in time devoted to child care related activities. As Lowndes points out, in contrast to a night out at the pub, participation in baby-sitting exchanges and school car pools is characterized by just the sorts of norms of reciprocity that are central to Putnam’s conception of social capital. This telling example illustrates a larger point and that is the general neglect in most treatments of social capital, not just of informal child care networks but also of more formal child care activities such as playgroups and after school clubs. She attributes this neglect to the continued influence of the public/private divide which relegates such activities to the domestic sphere and thereby overlooks their potential relevance to the ability of communities to work together to resolve collective problems.

This prompts Lowndes to ask about the implications of gender-specific patterns of activity for women’s political engagement. On the one hand, consideration of care-based networks begs questions about the conversion of social capital into political engagement and whether all forms of social capital are equal in this regard. On the other hand, it pushes us to consider ways of becoming politicized that typically fall under the radar screen of conventional political analyses. Lowndes cites the classic British example of the wives of striking miners.¹⁰ She concludes that transcending the public/private divide is “a vital precondition” for social capital analysis.

While Vivien Lowndes’s critique highlights the neglect of women’s networks in much of the literature, Maxine Molyneux’s critique underlines the problematic ways in which gender is present.¹¹ Molyneux approaches the social capital debate from the perspective of development studies. Her critique points to the neglect of both gendered inequality and gender politics in the conventional treatments of social capital. She shows that development projects and policies aimed at building social capital often rest on assumptions that are profoundly gendered. In relying on women’s unpaid labor, voluntary self-help schemes for poverty-relief and community-development end up imposing heavy yet hidden burdens on women. She goes on to discuss how gendered processes of inclusion and exclusion function to limit the benefits that women derive from their social capital. Differences in men’s and women’s networks do not simply reflect gender inequalities, she argues, they serve to perpetuate them. Finally, she points to the “conservative bias” that characterizes much of the literature. This is evident in the neglect of patriarchal structures within the family and in the assumption that “women’s unpaid work contributes to the stocks of social capital but their paid work does not.”¹²

What Could a Gendered Analysis Tell Us about Social Capital?

As these critiques illustrate, viewing the social capital approach through a gendered lens can contribute to richer debates about social capital. A gendered analysis of social capital brings to the fore larger questions about the distribution of social capital, differences in the nature of social capital, and differences in the way that social capital is used. Comparisons of the amount and type of social capital available to men and women highlight inequalities in accessing social capital and in the returns to be derived from activities that generate it. Once a gender perspective is applied, it becomes clear that social capital is “imbued with gender inequalities and gendered hierarchies.”¹³ This, in turn, raises larger questions about the ways in which social inequalities in general affect both the accumulation and the investment of social capital. It becomes clear that decisions regarding whether and where to participate are dependent on the resources that one possesses and the time that one has available to devote to such activities. Resources and time availability are but two of the many ways in which social roles shape the nature of social capital accumulation and use. Indeed, taking gender into account opens up the question of whether “it makes any sense at all to talk of social capital independently of material wealth or deprivation.”¹⁴

A gendered focus also renders clear the limitations of investigating social capital through the narrow lens of choice. In spite of the many gains made by women in past decades, especially in terms of participation in the labor force, women continue to predominate in certain groups while being relatively absent in others. This does not simply reflect selective joining on women’s part. Gendered patterns of employment, the demands of combining work and family responsibilities, and lack of valued attributes such as financial resources and political contacts all affect the type of associations that women join.¹⁵ Examinations of horizontal and vertical gender differentiation in groups and associations, both formal and informal, can thus serve as an important reminder that social networks and associations may “function to exclude as much as to include.”¹⁶ A consideration of the nature of women’s associational involvements also highlights the importance of context, the very places in which networks and norms of trust are developed. Context matters, because it affects both the “use value” and the “liquidity” of social capital: “The context-dependent nature of social capital. . .means that access to social resources is neither brokered equitably nor distributed evenly.”¹⁷

A gendered analysis of social capital necessarily directs our attention to power relations. As such, it encourages a consideration of alternative conceptions of social capital. Pierre Bourdieu, in particular, has emphasized the extent to which social capital is rooted in economic capital. He defines social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition—or in other words, to membership in a group.”¹⁸ His critical insight is that the maintenance of such a network requires a substantial investment of time and energy: “The reproduction of social capital presupposes an unceasing effort of sociability.”¹⁹ However, people differ in the amount of time and energy that they can commit. One of the key determinants of the availability of the requisite time and energy is the possession of economic capital. This leads Bourdieu to characterize social capital as a “transformed, disguised form of economic capital.”²⁰ The point is that by broadening the purview, a serious consideration of gender dynamics can contribute to a more critical vein of theorizing about social capital, its origins and its consequences.

Finally, a gendered lens brings into focus the underdeveloped state of theorizing about the causal mechanisms that link social capital and democratic politics. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to how social capital translates into political engagement. A gendered analysis may help to flesh out the mechanisms whereby social capital is converted into political resources and to identify the conditions that facilitate or impede that conversion. The mere existence of significant gender gaps in political interest and political knowledge suggests that the connection between social capital and political engagement is anything but automatic. If social capital really does foster political engagement, women’s lack of political interest and political information would have to be explained by a social capital deficit. However, by Putnam’s own account, women possess as much or more social capital than men. The fact that similar stocks of social capital do not necessarily make for similar levels of political interest and comparable stores of political knowledge begs an investigation of how social capital does or does not get transformed into democratic assets.

What Could Social Capital Tell Us about Gender and Politics?

Clearly, a serious consideration of gender dynamics can potentially make important contributions to ongoing debates about social capital. At the same time, though, we should not overlook the potential for social capital theory to tell us something about gender and politics. We may bemoan the relative neglect of gender in the work of Putnam and others, but that should not blind us to what Vivien Lowndes (in this volume) has termed the “natural affinity” between gender and social capital. This affinity is at once epistemological and empirical. At the level of epistemology, Lowndes argues, the social capital school represents a sharp departure from schools of politics that too often treat citizens as atomized individuals. In the social capital approach, the focus is very much on social relationships and connections among citizens. As such, it represents a determined effort to bring the “social” back into the study of politics. At the empirical level, social capital expands the boundaries of the “political” beyond the formal arenas of politics to include the informal domains of community activism.

Bringing social capital into the study of gender and politics may well help to cast fresh light on gendered patterns of political engagement. In Western democracies, women may turn out to vote in more or less the same numbers as men, but they typically have less interest in politics (as conventionally define...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Removing Rose Colored Glasses: Examining Theories of Social Capital through a Gendered Lens
• 2 Just Communities: Social Capital, Gender, and Culture
• 3 The Gender Gap Reversed: Political Consumerism as a Women-Friendly Form of Civic and Political Engagement
• 4 Gendering Social Capital: Bowling in Women’s Leagues?
• 5 Acting from the Heart: Values, Social Capital, and Women’s Involvement in Interfaith and Environmental Organizations
• 6 Conceptualizing Social Capital in Relation to Children and Young People: Is it Different for Girls?
• 7 Gender, Social Capital, and Politics
• 8 Canadian Women’s Religious Volunteerism: Compassion, Connections, and Comparisons
• 9 It’s Not What You’ve Got, But What You Do With It: Women, Social Capital, and Political Participation
• 10 Gender, Knowledge, and Social Capital
• 11 Gender-Role Orientations and the Conversion of Social Capital into Political Engagement
• 12 Persuasion and Perception: New Models of Network Effects on Gendered Issues
• 13 Changing Agendas: The Impact of Feminism on American Politics
• 14 Are Women Legislators Accountable to Women? The Complementary Roles of Feminist Identity and Women’s Organizations
• 15 Gender, Social Capital, and Political Engagement: Findings and Future Directions
• Bibliography
• Index