Do Male and Female Students Use Networks Differently?

Abstract

Gender differences in professional networks have been shown to contribute to men and women's disparate labor market outcomes. This gap could be due to differences in network access, differences in network usage, or both. Using novel administrative data from a student-alumni professional networking website, we study gender differences in student network usage, holding network access fixed. Focusing on messages sent by students to alumni, we document that male and female students network similarly, in terms of both the number of messages sent and the specific questions asked. Furthermore, there are only small gender differences in question tone.