Gender and Social Capital

433 Pages·2006·75.282 MB·English

by  Brenda Lee O'Neill, Elisabeth Gidengil (ed.)

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
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Published in 2006 by Published in Great Britain by
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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