Gendered Social Capital - A Case Study of Sports and Music Associations in Leksand and Rättvik, Sweden

2003

Earlier research has been able to establish a connection on an aggregated level between a lively participation in voluntary organisations and a flourishing economy. This has been explained in terms of dense, informal networks of civic engagement fostering norms of reciprocity and trust - i.e. social capital - which in turn facilitate co-operation and successful economic development. The causality on the individual level, that is the relationship between engagement in the voluntary sector and position on the labour market, has been less studied, though. In this paper, we focus on various qualities which the links between an individual's participation in the voluntary sector and position on t…