One in three French people has volunteer activities: 20 million of us give our time for free for others or for a cause ! Volunteer work corresponds to 580,000 " full-time equivalents". But what is the place of women in volunteering ?

Parity among volunteers, but...

The volunteer population is made up of 49% women and 51% men.

The sociology of volunteering informs us that the primary factors of commitment are found elsewhere than in gender. According to a recent study by AVISE, it is first and foremost the fact of having parents who are themselves committed that promotes the fact of giving time to others or to a cause. This factor is reinforced if one has received a religious education and/or been made aware of political issues. The level of qualifications also plays a role: 53% of women and 58% of men with higher education have voluntary activities, compared to 38% of people without qualifications.

Gender is involved in the distribution in the sectors of investment and the activities carried out within associations and citizen movements. Women are over-represented in cultural (55%), humanitarian (59%) and educational (68%) structures, and it is men who are in the majority involved in activities related to sport (68%) and leisure (54%).

The glass ceiling, also in volunteering

Whatever the field of volunteer activity, the share of women is shrinking as the level of responsibility in the structure increases: for example, while women account for 49% of association members, only 39% of presidents. Men, 51% of whom are members of associations, make up 61% of the contingent of presidents.

To explain this glass ceiling effect , we first invoke parenthood, which causes both involvement and responsibility in the associative world to fall more among women than men. AVISE evokes a " Saturday competition" : a privileged day for volunteer activities, it is also the day of housework in families. Some struggle to reconcile (a bit like with work the rest of the week), others are better able to sanctuarize times for each time of existence.

The access of women and men to responsibilities in the world of voluntary activities is also differentiated by the gendered relationship to networking : men are more likely to invest in volunteering as a circle of sociability and women as a space to respond to unmet social needs. This difference in approach reinforces the gendered distribution of fields of activity (women are more willing to invest in tutoring, helping the most vulnerable, etc.). and men in activities with a strong social dimension) and the lesser tendency of women to take on responsibilities in associations : they would be more willing, as volunteers, to act in a pragmatic way in the field; when men would better seize the opportunities for social valorization offered by volunteering.

A disguised " free work"?

Volunteering has long been of interest to economists and sociologists of the genre. In the 1970s, the notion of the " sexual division of militant labour" was coined to identify the differences in the transferability of disinterested commitment in socio-economic value. It was then shown that men benefit more from their voluntary activities than women when, for example, it is a question of being identified to appear on an electoral list, of highlighting associative projects on one's CV, or even of transforming a " non-profit " project into a social entrepreneurship structure that creates jobs. This analytical framework is now a little outdated due to the laws on parity in politics (which de facto limit the bonus to the association leader in the process of identifying candidates for elections), the diversification of the statutory forms of the SSE and a better consideration by employers of extra-professional activities...

Nevertheless, one question remains : that of the vast delegation to goodwill and voluntary work of certain essential activities. From helping the most disadvantaged to tutoring, defending rights and promoting artistic and cultural activities, spaces for women's volunteering if ever there was one, can we be fully satisfied with the fact that the response to these needs is largely provided by unpaid work? Without compromising the necessary circulation of generosity in a society, which is fundamental for social ties and the culture of solidarity, economists of the common good warn of the vulnerability of a decontractualized, not to say informal, model of value creation. On the side of experts on gender issues, we are still very vigilant about the propensity that women would have to do free work, in the domestic space as well as in community life and even in the context of work, even though this work brings value to the economy and society (the Stiglitz report even estimates the share of between 17% and 33% of the GDP).