Executive summary Social capital has become an increasingly investigated variable in understanding citizen participation, or lack of it, in public life and politics. Whilst there are reservations about the explanatory power of the concept, there are also demonstrations that social capital is a factor that influences communities, lowers crime, and may increase political participation. Although demographic variables do not seem to influence the growth of social capital, at least one study indicates that there are some gender differences (Onyx & Bullen. 2000). There are few studies of social capital in African countries, which is interesting given the strong and central role that women play in communities, and especially rural communities. One study has examined the relationship between social capital and political violence (Bhavnani & Backer. 2007), but the relationship between social capital and active citizenship more generally remains virgin territory. A recent Zimbabwean study, which included social capital as one variable in examining active citizenship, found differences between urban and rural residency in two measures of social capital, intimate and institutional trust (RAU. 2015). However, this study did not examine social capital in the broader sense, including belonging to community groups or attending community meetings, for example. The present study examined social capital in women using the data from the last three rounds of the Afrobarometer surveys on Zimbabwe: Round 5 (2012), Round 6 (2014), and Round 7 (2017). A measure of social capital was constructed using six questions common to all three rounds, and tested this against seven measures of public interest and participation, as well as four demographic variables (age, residence, employment and education). The measures of public interest and participation were also constructed from questions common to all three rounds: access to information, freedoms, political participation, agency, support for democracy, and political trust. A seventh measure, lived poverty, was included to check for possible confounding on the residence variable: it cannot be assumed that poverty in Zimbabwe is wholly a feature of the rural areas in the current economic climate. The data was analysed in SPSS (20) looking at correlations, factor analysis, and tests of means (t-test). Social capital in women is associated with Freedoms, Political participation,; Agency, Support for Democracy, and Political trust. Social capital in women is associated with believing that have the basic freedoms of speech and association; actively participate in elections by voting or working for a party or candidate; will contact MPs, local councillors or government officials; are supporters of democracy; and trust most public officials, from the president to the courts. Factor analysis produced four main factors, termed tentatively “Middle class”, “Active citizens”, “Politically engaged”, and “Employed”. The category of people described in the first factor, “Middle class”, seems very similar to a factor in a previous study, which was termed “disconnected democrats”. The second factor, Social capital, loads on “Active citizens”, together with Political Trust, Freedoms, and Support for Democracy. The third factor, “politically engaged”, suggests a group of citizens that are actively engaged in both electoral politics, political participation, as well as being involved in more continuous political activity through contacting duty bearers, Agency. Testing a number of hypotheses to try to establish causal relationships revealed a significant relationship between persons with “high social capital” and all the measures of interest and participation, excepting access to information. When these relationships were further tested 3