Research discussed in time magazine indicates that girls are more likely to form close knit friendships with a small number of people, whilst boys have larger collections of looser friendships. This seems to be hard wired into the genetic makeup and correlates nicely with the heavily male dominated area of entrepreneurs, which requires wide ranging connectivity.
This all neatly comes back to social capital theory, of course, where strong or weak bonds exist. After reading all the social capital text, i’m starting to see everything in terms of SC, so to rephrase the first paragraph, girls are better at forming bonding SC whilst boys are better at bridging SC.
All extreme generalisations of course!
I’m currently working my way through the second edition of Social Capital by John Field, which is in the Routledge Key Ideas range. Chapter one covers the history of the term and idea, mentioning the work of Hanifan (1916), through Dewey to the three contempory writers who have shaped most of the modern thinking on the concept – Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam.