Whether, How, and Why Networks Influence Men’s and Women’s Career Success: Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

Substantial research has documented challenges women experience building and benefiting from networks to achieve career success. Yet fundamental questions remain regarding which aspects of men’s and women’s networks differ and how differences impact their careers. To spur future research to address these questions, we present an integrative framework to clarify how and why gender and networks—in concert—may explain career inequality. We delineate two distinct, complementary explanations: (1) unequal network characteristics (UNC) asserts that men and women have different network characteristics, which account for differences in career success; (2) unequal network returns (UNR) asserts that even when men and women have the same network characteristics, they yield different degrees of career success. Further, we explain why UNC and UNR emerge by identifying mechanisms related to professional contexts, actors, and contacts. Using this framework, we review evidence of UNC and UNR for specific network characteristics. We found that men’s and women’s networks are similar in structure (i.e., size, openness, closeness, contacts’ average and structural status) but differ in composition (i.e., proportion of men, same-gender, and kin contacts). Many differences mattered for career success. We identified evidence of UNC only (same-gender contacts), UNR only (actors’ and contacts’ network openness, contacts’ relative status), neither UNC nor UNR (size), and both UNC and UNR (proportion of men contacts). Based on these initial findings, we offer guidance to organizations aiming to address inequality resulting from gender differences in network creation and utilization, and we present a research agenda for scholars to advance these efforts.

Search committee diversity and applicant pool representation of women and underrepresented minorities: A quasi-experimental field study.

“…), which at least partially accounts for gender differences in career success. In accordance, they found that men have greater proportions of same-gender contacts than women do; however, after taking the gender composition of one’s workplace into account, women are at least as likely to have as many same-gender contacts in their networks as men (Woehler et al, 2021). These findings and homophily theory suggest that in the context of faculty hiring, having women (as opposed to men) or URMs (as opposed to non-URM) serve as search committee chairs might relate to more diverse applicant pools (McPherson et al, 2001), as they would disseminate the job ad to more women and URM applicants that happen to be in their networks.…”

“…In fact, the positive effect of a woman search committee chair on the number of women applicants was explained by the mediating effect of an increased proportion of women on the search committee. In line with a specific type of homophily, that is, activist choice homophily (Greenberg & Mollick, 2017) and group differences in utilization of one's network (Woehler et al, 2021), women chairs reach out to other similar individuals (women) to serve on the search committee even when department demographics are held constant. The supplemental analyses (see Appendix B) further support these explanations by showing that women search chairs, compared to men, utilize their personal networks to a greater extent to target and identify minority applicants.…”

“…Third, this study examines the mechanisms through which homophilous networks develop, specifically the active engagement of women and URM, motivated by activist choice homophily, to develop networks that include more women and URM, as compared to majority group members whose networking behaviors may inadvertently perpetuate the status quo. In doing so, we also draw upon the concepts of unequal network characteristics (UNCs) and network utilization (Woehler et al, 2021) to explain the underlying phenomena at play. Finally, the current study focuses on the first step of diversifying an organization, namely, the attraction of women and URM applicants (Arthur & Doverspike, 2005), extending the recruitment and diversity literature.…”

Twenty-five years of career growth literature: a review and research agenda

“…First, this study differs from the earlier reviews of career literature by focusing only on career growth. Prior reviews in career literature have extensively discussed the career boundarylessnesscareer success relationship (Guan et al, 2019), the issues surrounding objective versus subjective career success (Spurk et al, 2019) and the factors leading to men's and women's career success (Woehler et al, 2021). However, the reviews on career growth literature are sparse.…”

An Enterprise Social Analytics Dashboard to Support Competence Valorization and Diversity Management

“…In the same vein, a number of studies analyze users' behavior in social networks according to gender [27]. In Reference [28], the authors present a model to analyze users' behavior in an online game, an application that may share some common traits with enterprise networks.…”