Connecting Social Trust and Empowerment: A Socio-Analytical Study of Women’s Organisations

By 2030, an estimated 340 million women and girls will live in extreme poverty due to the gender gap in leadership roles. It is also shown that over 12.5% of women aged 15-49 experience physical or sexual violence from intimate partners (UN Women 2023). Additionally, with inadequate law enforcement and cultural misconceptions, over 700 million girls, particularly in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, are married before age 18 (UN Women 2016). With only one-quarter of countries tracking budget allocations for gender equality (UN Women 2019), recent studies indicate the vital roles of women’s movements in transforming social norms and gender power relations. Yet, these organisations face right-wing attacks on feminism (Epstein 2001) and resistance in non-western contexts due to perceived dependence on Western ideologies and funding ties (Jad 2004:34). Studies of social capital have emphasised the structures of cultural ties and their impact on individual interaction levels, as culture can influence social structure by encouraging individuals to interact with those who share similar behaviours or by using cultural symbols to identify groups (Cantor and Whitehead 2013:1).

This study investigates the differences in trust towards women's organisations across regions, focussing on social factors that influence this trust. Using data from the World Values Survey (1995-2022) and hierarchical multilevel regression analysis, it highlights how global feminisms shape shared values and transformative identity politics. Adding, applying multi-level analysis within an intersectional framework offers a robust method to examine how individual and contextual factors impact trust in women’s organisations and how global feminist movements drive for social justice.