A sustainable participation in society for both men and women is a pressing challenge. Despite dramatic changes, gender inequality persists. Women are underrepresented in management, assume most domestic responsibilities, have higher poverty rates, are as engaged as men in voluntary associations but belong to different types of associations, and are more deeply embedded in informal social networks. These ‘gender gaps’ differ between countries, for example, between welfare regimes. However, we lack sufficient knowledge about which societal factors at the macro and meso level -cultural, economic, political institutions - influence lives of men and women and how they do so. EQUALITY is an innovative research project that aims to increase understanding of the persistent gender inequality at different levels and in different spheres of life in Europe and the US.

Overall aims

• To integrate sociological, demographic, and economic insights to increase understanding of the persistent inequality between men and women in Europe and the US; and to investigate the different, sometimes contradictory, effects of the societal contexts on different dimensions of gender inequality, i.e., market success, division of household tasks, poverty, and civic engagement;
• To unravel relevant societal contexts, including gender culture, policy and economic indicators;
• To increase understanding of the direct, indirect, and interaction effects of societal contexts in relation to individual-level gender inequality;
• To apply innovative multi-level modelling to increase understanding of gender in society;
• To expand knowledge of conditions for achieving sustainable, equal participation of men and women.

Individual Project 3: Networks, Social Capital and Gender Inequalities

The aim of this project is to address gender inequalities in social capital. It has been shown that different types of social ties (e.g., kin versus non-kin ties; bonding vs. bridging) lead to differential access to social capital and can be more or less useful in accessing socially embedded resources. Thus, one important question is whether men’s and women’s associational involvement and informal social networks bring them into different positions with regard to social structural opportunities. Do men and women ‘capitalize’ on their social capital in different ways? Do they  generate different levels and different forms of social capital? If yes, do  these differences vary in different community settings, countries or welfare regimes?

IP3 will use three large-scale cross-national surveys that are available for secondary analysis and provide individual-level information for a large number of countries: European Social Survey (ESS), European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS), and the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). These data sets will be used to examine gender differences in creation, use and returns of social capital, using indicators of social capital on the individual and macro level for a number of countries included in the survey.

The data used in IP3 have a hierarchical structure, i. e. respondents are “nested” in countries. Therefore, multilevel modeling is an appropriate analytical technique for investigating the research questions. Multilevel analysis allows the simultaneous examination of the effects of country level and individual level variables on individual level outcomes while accounting for the non-independence of observations within countries. This is particularly important in a study of social capital which is also theoretically considered both an individual and macro (community/country) level phenomenon.

Memberships in voluntary associations (Sascha Peter)

Membership and participation in associations and groups is assumed to generate community goods, such as trust, economic prosperity and democracy, as well as individual rewards through access to socially embedded resources. Equality of opportunity may not be given if gender specific differences in the endowments of socially embedded resources exist due to differences in associational involvement. Accordingly, cross-national variation in the gender differential in associational involvement will be the focus of this sub-project.

Size of friendship networks (Andreas Techen)

Social contacts (like friendships) are one important dimension of the social capital concept, which  is often used to explain (gender) differences in participation in the labor force or  differences in quality of life. However,  there is only scant research on gender differences in the determinants of friendship network size and on the relationship between the societal context and the size of individual friendship networks. This sub-project is aimed to start closing this gap in our knowledge.