“Let’s not get sexist” women and identity in community organizations

ABSTRACT

In a study of social identities and people’s participation in local neighborhood associations, collective identities based on gender and/or race seldom emerged. Although neighborhood associations provide an opportunity for citizens to gain civic skills, they can also serve as sites of what I call everyday exclusions. Women are not denied membership or leadership positions. Rather, women occupy more leadership positions than men. Because of gender stereotypes and gendered assumptions about power, however, women are sometimes seen by other women as less effective leaders. Findings are based on participant observation of association meetings in St. Louis, Missouri and 31 semi-structured interviews.

KEYWORDS:

• Everyday exclusions
• social identity
• community organizing
• gender stereotypes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the participants in this study for allowing me to observe their meetings and to interview them. I humbled by their dedication to their community. I am also grateful to Scott McClurg, Laura Hatcher, Celeste Montoya, and anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Janet is a participant in this study. All names of participants and neighborhood associations have been changed to protect the confidentiality of participants and groups.

2 The information in this paragraph was obtained through interviews with Neighborhood Stabilization Officers (NSOs) who work for the City of St. Louis. I interviewed a sample of NSOs to learn what types of neighborhood associations were in their jurisdiction. NSOs are required to attend association meetings as part of their job description. Although NSOs work with local associations, they exert no direct power over them. NSOs are members of the Neighborhood Stabilization Team (NST), which was created in the early 1990s. The NST office “serves as a catalyst for bringing together the Police, elected officials, governmental agencies, social service organizations, community groups and individuals to identify permanent solutions to on-going problems” (City of St. Louis 2008).

3 I use the lens and “focus point” analogy to describe how people construct their identities. However, this analogy has its limitations, implying that identities can be put neatly into different boxes. My intention is not to deny the overlapping and intersecting aspects of identity, but to provide an analogy to help understand how identities are constructed.