Gender Differences Of Urban Citizens’ Social Capital

As a new field in sociology, the study on social capital is getting more and more popular in recent years. Many scholars have done researches about social capital from a variety of aspects and lots of research results have been published. However, there are quiet few systematic studies about gender difference of social capital and its influence. The researchers on social gender also pay little attention to the gender difference of social capital, especially lacking of quantitative research.Based on the data obtained from "the survey on social network and career experience in2009", this paper makes comparison and analysis in the aspects of characteristics of social network between men and women and the use of social capital in instrumental behaviors as well as the returns of social capital from the perspective of social network analysis. On the one hand, this paper provides a new prospective to analyze the inequality of social and economic status between men and women and enrich the study of social gender and related theory of social capital. On the other hand, by comparing and analyzing the factors affecting social network capital between men and women, it also lays the theoretical foundation for increasing women’s social capital stock and perfecting women’s strategy of using social capital as well as improving their social and economic status.The results revealed that:there are marked differences in the social network features between men and women in urban cities. Men have better social capital than women. As women have a relatively small social network with higher ratio of relatives and less plurality as well as lower upper reachability, they are in inferior position in maintaining and expanding social network. When it comes to the use of social network, women are more likely to make use of social network in instrumental behaviors, probably owing to the phenomenon that women are disadvantaged in social status and suffer from sexual discrimination in the labor market. Therefore, women need make full use of their social network to offset the unfavorable condition in finding jobs. Referring to the returns of social capital (monthly income and job satisfaction), women gain more than men.Generally speaking, this paper consists of the following parts:Chapter1:Introduction, mainly introduces the origin and the meaning of the research, and then draws out the research contents.Chapter2:This part mainly talks about related theory about social capital and makes a brief summary of the related literature and then proposes innovation.Chapter3:This chapter discusses the research design including the source of the date, the measurement of variables, methods and presents research hypothesis according to previous studies and related theories.Chapter4:It is a chapter explaining the research results consisting of the following contents:describing and analyzing characteristics of social network between men and women; analyzing the factors affecting characteristics of social network; then analyzing the impact of gender on finding jobs with social network; finally analyzing the return of social capital on monthly income and job satisfaction of men and women.Chapter5:This part summarizes the research conclusions and makes a further discussion of the shortcomings.