Social cohesion and gender: reflections on tendencies and tensions

Social cohesion, in various guises, has become a topic of great interest in recent years -- to policy, to sociologists and other social scientists, and to the public. The knit of social fabric is dependent on relationality, on social caring and connectedness, on a sense of social cohesion. Questions about social cohesion centre on a sense of growing inequalities compounded by increasing diversities. A key dimension of both the relationality dimension of social cohesion and the questions about inequalities of diversity is gender and a strong interest in addressing gender faultlines. In the reflection, emerging tendencies, counter-tendencies and tensions with respect to gender and social cohesion clustering around gender and age, the gender gap in political attitudes, the privatization of life and of family, the emergence of new forms of social cohesion, modernization of gender regimes, regionalization, and the persistence and reinforcement of sexism are examined. It is suggested that gender faultlines may be increasing in serving the interests of globalizing markets.