Networks of inequality: Gender, social capital, and income across diverse societies

Drawing on the 2017 International Social Survey Programme module on Social Networks and Social Resources, this article examines whether social capital contributes to gender income gaps across 29 societies. We distinguish between capital deficits, unequal access to resource-rich networks, and return deficits, unequal income returns to comparable network resources. Social capital is measured through upper reachability, extensity, and diversity in strong and weak ties. Using multilevel regression models and Kitagawa–Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, we show that network diversity, especially strong-tie diversity, is positively linked to income. Women have lower levels of some forms of social capital, particularly network diversity, and these differences explain a modest but significant share of the gender income gap. Return deficits are less consistently supported. Contextual analyses reveal that social capital widens the gender income gap in developing societies, mainly through strong-tie diversity. In relatively collectivist societies, however, strong-tie diversity offsets part of the gap, suggesting that occupationally diverse strong ties may serve as compensatory resources for women. The findings show that social capital is neither inherently equalising nor unequalising; its consequences depend on the institutional and cultural organisation of social ties.