The Social Context of Men's and Women's Job Search Ties: Membership in Voluntary Organizations, Social Resources, and Job Search Outcomes

Abstract

We address a neglected issue in the literature on social resources by asking how one aspect of the context of searcher-contact ties, shared membership in voluntary organizations, affects social resources and, through them, job search outcomes. We also ask whether these effects differ by gender. Our results show that using a contact with whom a job searcher shared membership in a fraternal/service organization decreased the probability that the searcher-contact tie was weak, but membership in these organizations and in church and recreational organizations increased the probability that the tie was gender homophilous. Both church and business voluntary organizational contexts had a positive effect on the use of a contact who was significantly older. Finally, for women, we find a negative effect of shared membership in school organizations on the probability that the searcher-contact tie was weak and, for men, a positive effect of business organizational context on the probability that the tie was gender homophilous. We also find that voluntary organizational contexts exert indirect effects on search outcomes through these tie and contact characteristics, but these effects depend not only upon the type of voluntary organizational context and the gender of the searcher, but also upon the type of social resources through which the effects are exerted. We suggest that the structure of voluntary organizations may underlie these effects. In our conclusions, we examine the implications of these analyses for studying this and other tie contexts, for understanding resource-building, and for studying the role of social networks in individual action.