Abstract
Networking behaviors are a potentially important factor driving gender differences in social networks and contributing to the gender gap in career achievement, yet we know little about how and why ...
Highlights
Voluminous research has documented the gender gap in career attainment
These results suggest that, in addition to the schmoozing that men do, women engage in scouting, a heretofore unexamined gender-homophilous form of networking aimed at finding employers and career options where they will have the best chance of professional success
Our finding – that in job search, women engage in incremental scouting with other women, in addition to doing the same schmoozing that men do – is at odds with the results of the other research into job-related networking behaviors, which have found little evidence of gender differences in networking intensity or in networking styles (Aldrich, Reese, & Dubini 1989; Forret & Dougherty 2004; Casciaro, Gino & Kouchaki 2014; Bensaou, Galunic & JonczykSedes 2016)
Summary
Networking behaviors are a potentially important factor driving gender differences in social networks and contributing to the gender gap in career achievement, yet we know little about how and why gender shapes networking behavior. Our finding – that in job search, women engage in incremental scouting with other women, in addition to doing the same schmoozing that men do – is at odds with the results of the other research into job-related networking behaviors, which have found little evidence of gender differences in networking intensity or in networking styles (Aldrich, Reese, & Dubini 1989; Forret & Dougherty 2004; Casciaro, Gino & Kouchaki 2014; Bensaou, Galunic & JonczykSedes 2016) While work by Shih (2006) on Silicon Valley white female engineers suggests the possibility that scouting may not be unique to MBA women, we leave it for future research to investigate how gender shapes networking in other parts of the labor market In spite of these limitations, our study has significant practical implications for organizational and societal efforts to promote gender equity. Our results suggest that these institutional efforts to create networking opportunities are a valuable response to gender-based barriers in the workplace, in that they give women greater, if costly, opportunity to “scout for good jobs.”
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