Exploring the Timebanking in Traditional Societies: Would Unemployed Women Exchange their Time?

Abstract

A timebank is a non-monetary service exchange system that empowers marginalized groups and enhances social capital development in local communities. Timebanks create a time-based mechanism that values work which is often unrecognized in the default economy, particularly under the care economy umbrella. There are many popular and successful timebanks in developed countries. However, the model is practically unheard of in the Arab World. Research that focuses on the system’s application in a developing country, especially in the Middle East is non-existent. Through analysing how virtual communities of Facebook groups mediate social capital development for 20 unemployed women, this exploratory, inductive, and qualitative research analyses the potential and feasibility of the timebank model in developing countries context of Egypt. Using Yuan, Hanrahan, and Carrol (2018) framework on social capital operationalization, this study confirms the strong relationship between trust and reciprocity as dimension variables, self-efficacy, and communication (requests and offers) as predictor variables and sense of community. Considering each concept's context-specific definition and factors, findings suggest that trust is the most important factor in the Egyptian context which could hinder or enable building social capital through a timebank.