Power and social exchange

Abstract

One of the most basic indicators of gender inequality is the distribution of power between men and women. Across time, across societies, and across a wide range of settings, men have greater power than women. They have greater access to, and control over, valued resources, and they have greater formal power, embedded in positions of authority and codified in law. At the macro level, this unequal distribution of power is a basic indi­ cator of gender inequality. At the micro level, it raises questions about the relation between interaction and gender inequality. Are men more willing or more effective users of power than women, or do they simply appear so because of their greater access to structural power? Would gender-equal positions of structural power erase any gender differences in power-related interactions-exchange, cooperation, bargaining, and the like? Or do men and women use power differently even when their capacity for power use is equivalent? In this chapter we examine the relation between gender and power use. We do not address the macro-level question of how men come to occupy positions of greater structural power. Instead, we ask how gender affects the use of structural power in social interaction. Experimental studies that manipulate the structural power positions to which men and women are assigned allow us to disentangle the effects of structural power and gender, and examine how men and women use power when they are placed in equivalent positions of structural power. We begin by discussing two major kinds of micro theories of gender and power: those that locate gender differences in power use in the individual, and those that locate gender differences in social structure. After reviewing the research conducted in each of these traditions, we report the results of recent analyses of gender effects in a program of research on power and exchange. We evaluate these results in view of previous findings and existing theory, and consider their implications for gender inequality.