Elderly women’s voluntary work: a mixed methods study of resources, values and practices in a religious and a social-humanitarian organisation

This project focuses on women born around 1940–1955, who represent a key group in maintaining social and humanitarian voluntary work in Swedish society.

They are overrepresented among those who carry out such work in Swedish society, in particular in religious and social-humanitarian organisations.

To capture the resources, values and practices through which they engage in this work is thus a crucial issue for projecting the future of voluntary work.

Previous survey studies show that women’s ways of engaging in and motivations for voluntary work differ from men in the same age group.

Yet, a thorough investigation of why and how women in this age group commit to voluntary work remains an under studied area.

The aims of this project are, firstly, to provide new empirical knowledge on resources, values and practices that shape the voluntary work of women born 1940–1955 in Sweden.

This will be reached through combining a stratified random sample survey of 5000 individuals and ethnographic case studies using interviews and observations in Church of Sweden and Red Cross groups in three locations across the country.

The second aim is to develop theories and methods for studying the significance of religion in motivating voluntary work, through combining theories of social and religious capital and on lived religion as social practice.

In this way the project contributes to Swedish and international research on the significance of gender and religiosity in voluntary work.