The social composition of contexts wherein people find themselves affects the opportunities to meet particular others and engage in contact with them, and thereby the structure and the composition of a person’s network. In this project, it has been shown that social contexts, places where people meet each other – such as work, school, neighborhood, but also family, going out places or the internet – matter for the resulting relationship. First of all, different important network relationships have been met at particular places: Meeting in educational contexts, voluntary organizations and the church is most ‘productive’ in creating friendship. Second, there seems to be a ‘path-dependency in friendships: if one has met a network member in a particular setting chances are high that another one is also met there at a later point in time.
It is widely acknowledged that woman’s networks and their social capital considerably differ from men’s. Given that social capital is an important resource for getting ahead in society it is important to understand these differences. Do women and men create different forms of social capital and are there differences in the benefits of social capital? What are the benefits of social networks and social capital, concerning local and non-local ties as well as ties on the micro and the macro (neighbourhood) level for women’s businesses? These questions are addressed in order to determine whether gender differences impact the way entrepreneurs run their business. Findings show that men and women differ in their number of weaker ties. In addition, women benefit from neighbourhood social capital and not so much from actual network ties, whereas for men the opposite holds, they benefit from diversity in actual network ties.
The SSND, the survey of the social networks of the Dutch is a longitudinal project monitoring people’s network through time. Next to this, it has a clear focus on networks in neighborhoods. Starting in 1999, we have interviewed 1000 inhabitants all around the country about their personal network, their work, neighborhood and their issues in life. Since then, my colleagues and I organized two more waves, in 2008 and in 2014. It is intriguing to see how people’s networks change through time. So far, we found that people do not rapidly loose friends, but that there is a lot of dynamic in relationships. Persons who are in a given time period central in ones life are much more in the periphery later on – but this does not mean that the relation does not exist anymore. In autumn 2017 the fourth and final wave will be collected.