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433 Pages·2006·75.282 MB·English
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GENDER AND S O C I A L C A P I T A L EDITED BY Brenda O ’Neill and Elisabeth Gidengil ROUTLEDGE TRayoloru &t Flreandcisg Geroup New York London Copyrighted Material Published in 2006 by Published in Great Britain by Routledge Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue 2 Park Square New York, NY 10016 Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN © 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number-10: 0-415-95022-8 (Hardcover) 0-415-95023-6 (Softcover) International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-95022-0 (Hardcover) 978-0-415-95023-7 (Softcover) Library of Congress Card Number 2005008172 No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gender and social capital / edited by Brenda O'Neill and Elisabeth Gidengil. p. cm. - -(Gender politics, global issues) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-95022-8 (hb : alk. paper) - -ISBN 0-415-95023-6 (pb : alk. paper) 1. Social capital (Sociology) 2. Sex role. 3. Women political activists. 4. Women volunteers in social service. I. O’Neill, Brenda Lee, 1964- II. Gidengil, Elisabeth, 1947- III. Series. HM708.G43 2005 305.42’01 -dc22 2.005008172 informa Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com Taylor & Francis Group and the Routledge Web site at is the Academic Division of Informa pic. http://www.routledge-ny.com Copyrighted Material Contents Preface v 1 Removing Rose Colored Glasses: 1 Examining Theories of Social Capital through a Gendered Lens Elisabeth Gidengil and Brenda O’Neill 2 Just Communities: Social Capital, Gender, and Culture 15 Barbara Arneil 3 The Gender Gap Reversed: 45 Political Consumerism as a Women-Friendly Form of Civic and Political Engagement Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti 4 Gendering Social Capital: Bowling in Women’s Leagues? 73 Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart 5 Acting from the Heart: 99 Values, Social Capital, and Women’s Involvement in Interfaith and Environmental Organizations Amy Caiazza and Barbara Gault 6 Conceptualizing Social Capital in Relation 127 to Children and Young People: Is it Different for Girls? Virginia Morrow 7 Gender, Social Capital, and Politics 151 Virginia Sapiro 8 Canadian Women’s Religious Volunteerism: 185 Compassion, Connections, and Comparisons Brenda O’Neill 9 It’s Not What You’ve Got, But What You Do With It: 213 Women, Social Capital, and Political Participation Vivien Lowndes iii Copyrighted Material iv Contents 10 Gender, Knowledge, and Social Capital 241 Elisabeth Gidengil, Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant, Neil Nevitte, and André Blais 11 Gender-Role Orientations and the Conversion 273 of Social Capital into Political Engagement Joanna Everitt 12 Persuasion and Perception: 293 New Models of Network Effects on Gendered Issues Bonnie H. Erickson 13 Changing Agendas: 323 The Impact of Feminism on American Politics Kristin A. Goss and Theda Skocpol 14 Are Women Legislators Accountable to Women? 357 The Complementary Roles of Feminist Identity and Women’s Organizations Susan ]. Carroll 15 Gender, Social Capital, and Political Engagement: 379 Findings and Future Directions Elisabeth Gidengil and Brenda O’Neill Bibliography 391 Index 411 Copyrighted Material Preface The interest in social capital as a concept in the social sciences has grown exponentially in recent years. As with all concepts that help to refocus disciplines, subsequent research has encouraged its refine- ment and enhanced its usefulness by critiquing its original formula- tion. This book has as its goal just this—refining and thus enhancing the usefulness of the concept of social capital in the social sciences. Much of the book focuses on the concept’s application within the study of politics and particularly political engagement, but it extends beyond this. Considering social capital in relation to gender relations and women more generally promotes a more nuanced understanding of the larger relationship between trust, norms of reciprocity, and social networks than currently exists. A workshop that Brenda organized on the subject of gender and social capital at the Annual Meetings of the Canadian Political Sci- ence Association in 2002 was the genesis for this book. The interest generated on the topic there among Canadian researchers and a be- lief that the subject demanded greater attention led to the organiza- tion of a conference by both editors devoted specifically to the topic in May of 2003 at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Mani- toba. The Gender and Social Capital Conference brought together a number of the ultimate authors of the book for two productive days discussing the application of social capital to gender and women in a number of contexts. The success of that conference and the relative absence of the topic in the literature reinforced a belief that a book devoted to the topic was needed. Moreover, the conference reinforced an understanding that in spite of the wealth of research on various related topics taking place around the globe, researchers continue to some extent to engage within rather narrow circles. As important as inter- and multi-disciplinarity, physically bringing diverse researchers V Copyrighted Material vi Preface together to engage and share research unfortunately remains an im- portant and undervalued goal. A number of individuals and organizations should be recognized for their role in bringing the project through to completion. We must recognize a generous grant from the Aid to Occasional Conferences Fund of the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHCC) that was crucial to the mounting of the Gender and Social Capital Conference in 2003. Thanks are due to those at the Univer- sity of Manitoba for their financial assistance toward the conference, including the Departments of Political Studies, History, Anthropol- ogy and Sociology, the Women’s Studies Program, the Faculty of Graduate Studies, The Office of the Vice-President (Research), the University Distinguished Visiting Lectureship Committee and the Duff Roblin Professorship. Special thanks are due to the Faculty of Arts and specifically the Dean of Arts at the time, Dr. Robert O’Kell, for his financial support and encouragement. St. John’s College at the University of Manitoba provided a warm and hospitable environ- ment for the conference, as did the University Club. A number of graduate students provided assistance that was crucial: Delton Daigle and Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant at McGill University helped with the preparation of the SSHCC application for funding and Marina Roun- tree and Allison Evers at the University of Manitoba were instrumen- tal in helping to organize and mount the conference. Allison Evers’ assistance was also indispensable for the timely completion of the manuscript. We would like to extend our thanks to Robert Tempio, Angela Chnapko, and Julie Spadaro at Routledge/Taylor and Francis and Lynn Goeller at EvS Communications for their support at every stage in the production of this book. Finally, we wish to thank our families for their constant support, encouragement, and love—a debt too great to repay. Copyrighted Material 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 Ameri- can 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 individu- als—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthi- ness 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 fur- ther 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 impor- tant role in creating and sustaining stocks of social capital. However, gender dynamics have figured in this body of research in only very 1 Copyrighted Material 2 Elisabeth Gidengil and Brenda O’Neill limited and partial ways. Feminist scholars have remarked on the “curious silence”3 on the subject within the debates over social capi- tal 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, poli- tics, and society to evaluate Putnam’s social capital thesis from a gen- dered 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 num- ber 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, regard- less 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 Copyrighted Material Removing Rose Colored Glasses 3 from their stocks of social capital, and whether differences in the na - ture 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. Gen- dered 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 involve- ment 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 lei- sure 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 analy- sis 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 infor- mal 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 Copyrighted Material

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