Summary

  • The project investigates how social networks shape and sustain gender inequalities.
  • It examines whether gender influences how people form, maintain, and dissolve social networks, and whether outcomes like status, power, and isolation differ.
  • It also explores how gendered patterns vary across relationship types and contexts such as schools and organizations with differing gender cultures and policies.

Research summary

  • An anthropological study of imaginaries of climate change and renewable energy in the context of net zero transitions in the UK.
  • Exploring the everyday work of bringing about a just transition through a study of local and community energy in two cities in England.
  • Funded by the ESRC and hosted between The University of Manchester and University College London.

Project overview

Gender inequality remains a global issue with social and economic costs, despite international goals like the UN 2030 Agenda. Women, LGBT communities, and men in nontraditional roles all face unequal opportunities reinforced by gendered hierarchies embedded in social structures.

This project investigates how social networks produce and reproduce gender inequalities by linking everyday gendered interactions to broader structural disparities.

It aims to identify the social network mechanisms shaping these inequalities, addressing gaps in both gender and network studies.

Through analyses of personal, school, organizational, and illicit networks, it will assess how gender influences network formation, maintenance, and outcomes across different contexts.