Gender and Social Capital brings together leading scholars to provide a critical analysis of the social capital thesis from a gendered perspective. Robert Putnam argues that women have played an important role in creating and sustaining stocks of social capital. Yet there has been relatively little in the way of sustained critical analysis of Putnam's thesis as it related to women, despite clear evidence of the existence of gendered patterns of associational involvement and women's numerical under-representation in democratic institutions. The contributors investigate several facets of the interaction between social capital and gender, including the gendered nature of associational involvement, the privileging of gender inequalities within the theoretical conception of social capital, the gendered use of social capital representation, and political consumerism as a form of social capital. The book provides a critique of Putnam's theory from several different approaches (theoretical, historical, comparative and empirical), drawing on original research from several advanced democracies (Belgium, Britain, Canada, Sweden and the United States).