Women Need a Different Kind of Network Than Men Do
Professional networks are critical to career success. New research compares those of high-achieving men and women and finds an important difference. The study drew on 4.5 million anonymized email exchanges among a subset of MBA students graduating from a top U.S. business school in 2006 and 2007—some 728 people in all, 26% of whom were women. By identifying who emailed whom and how frequently, the researchers mapped each student’s network and assessed his or her centrality—that is, not just how many direct contacts each had but whether those contacts were in touch with lots of other people, providing second-degree connectedness to a wider group. The researchers also looked at students’ interactions with their “inner circle”—their two to four most frequent contacts. They then examined how each person fared in the job market after graduating, controlling for factors including undergraduate GPAs, test scores, sociability, country of origin, and prior work experience.
Among men, those in the top quartile of centrality did best, landing jobs with 1.5 times as much authority and pay, on average, as those found by the bottom quartile. The researchers believe that centrality drives success by providing fast access to employment information. For women, the story was more nuanced. The most successful also had a high degree of centrality, but they needed something else: an inner circle of female contacts. Women in the top quartile of centrality who had a femaledominated inner circle found jobs that were 2.5 times as high in authority and pay as those found by peers who lacked that combination, probably because the female inner circles provided critical gender-related information—whether a firm had good advancement opportunities for both men and women, say. And not all female inner circles were equal: The best ones comprised women who were tightly bound to one another but had nonoverlapping extended networks, presumably affording access to more information. (The gender breakdown of men’s inner circles had no effect on what jobs the men found.)
The researchers say that when thinking about their networks, women should favor quality over quantity (seeking people with multiple networks), embrace randomness (to avoid associating only with people like themselves), and guard against building an inner circle that is too interconnected. Organizations can support such efforts by encouraging people to meet colleagues outside their functional silos. “Women face a greater challenge in networking to find professional opportunities,” the researchers say. “[But] by taking a smart approach, women can continue to find meaningful advancement options.”
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