Organizationally Imprinted Networks and Gender Disparities in the Labor Market

Abstract

How do organizations gender network hiring? There is ample research suggesting that network hiring contributes to gendered outcomes for workers and organizations and that the hiring organization is key to this process. However, the hiring firm is not the only relevant organizational context for labor market networks, since workers’ past labor market experiences are likely to have shaped the networks they carry forward as they search for new employment opportunities. The settings in which workers originally formed connections may therefore also influence the value of job movers’ contacts. This paper uses administrative data on job moves across the Danish labor market from 2014-2016 and an innovative matching strategy to examine how the gender composition of two organizations - hiring establishments and the establishments in which a mover and their contact previously worked together - influences the value of contacts. We find that ties to male managers are particularly useful overall, and in both organizational settings, ties are most useful when employees are in the gender majority. Our findings show how successfully managing a diverse workforce is important for the long-term careers of workers and suggests that access to authority figures should be a priority of organizational networking and mentorship programs.