Women who regularly interact with a female-dominated circle are more likely to achieve high leadership positions, according to a new study from the University of Notre Dame and Northwestern University. The survey found that more than 75 percent of high-ranking women maintain a female-dominated circle or strong ties to two or three women with whom they have interacted frequently within their network. For men, the larger their network – regardless of gender composition – the more likely they are to achieve a high position. Unfortunately, when women have social networks that resemble their male counterparts, they are more likely to occupy low positions.
For the study, the researchers reviewed social and communication networks of more than 700 alumni of a top-ranking business school in the United States. Each student in the study had accepted leadership-level positions, which were normalized for industry- and region-specific salaries. Researchers then compared three variables of each student's social network:network centrality or the size of the social network; homosexuality of the sex, or the proportion of same-sex contacts; and communication equality, or the amount of strong versus weak network ties.
Women with high network centrality and a female-dominated circle have an expected work supply level 2.5 times greater than women with low network centrality and a male-dominated circle. When it comes to achieving leadership positions, women probably don't benefit from adding the best-connected person to their network. While these connections can improve access to public information important for job search and negotiation, female-dominated circles can help women gain gender-specific information that would be more important in a male-dominated job market.
"We also saw that inner circles benefit from each other, suggesting that women receive gender-specific private information and support from within their own circle, while non-overlapping connections provide other labor market designations," said the researcher.
