Social capital, gender, and health: an ethnographic analysis of women in a Mumbai slum

Abstract

Objective:Quantitative studies have demonstrated that social capital can positively impact community health, but qualitative explorations of the factors mediating this relationship are lacking. Furthermore, while the world’s poor are becoming increasingly concentrated in the cities of lower-middle income countries, most of the existing literature on social capital and health explores these variables in Western or rural contexts. Even fewer studies consider the impact of social constructs like race, gender, or class on the creation of social capital and its operationalization in health promotion. Our study aimed to address these gaps in the literature through an ethnographic exploration of social capital among women living in Kaula Bandar (KB) – a marginalized slum on the eastern waterfront of Mumbai, India. We then sought to identify how these women leveraged their social capital to promote health within their households.Methods:This was a mixed-method, qualitative study involving participant observation and 20 in-depth, semi-structured, individual interviews over a nine-month period. Field notes and interview transcripts were manually analyzed for recurring content and themes.Results:We found that women in KB relied heavily on bonding social capital for both daily survival and survival during a health crisis, but that the local contexts of gender and poverty actively impeded the ability of women in this community to build forms of social capital – namely bridging or linking social capital – that could be leveraged for health promotion beyond immediate survival.Conclusions:These findings illustrate the context-specific challenges that women living in urban poverty face in their efforts to build social capital and promote health within their households and communities. Community-based qualitative studies are needed to identify the macro- and micro-level forces, like gender and class oppression, in which these challenges are rooted. Directly addressing these structural inequalities significantly increases the potential for health promotion through social capital formation.