Women who LinkedIn: The gender networking gap among executives

Abstract

We investigate the patterns of executive networking on LinkedIn, a crucial platform for understanding the persistent gender disparities in leadership positions. Overcoming the challenges of accessing LinkedIn's network data, we have curated a comprehensive dataset of Spanish women and men executives. This unique dataset includes information about their connections and, more importantly, whom they do not connect with. At the baseline level, our findings indicate a prevalent tendency for preferential attachment, where individuals are more likely to connect with popular contacts. Additionally, there is a pronounced inclination towards homophily, characterized by forming connections based on gender, as well as shared organizational and academic affiliations. Building upon the tenets of Social Identity Theory, we identify significant gender differences on LinkedIn's executive networking. Women executives, positioned as out-group members within executive networks, suffer from a networking gender gap resulting in being under-connected and being connected with less popular individuals. However, our research methodology helps us uncover two different strategies women use to overcome this gap. They rely, more than men, on gender homophily to make contacts. Besides, women executives adopt recategorization strategies exhibiting a higher preference for contacts with shared organizational and academic affiliations than men. These findings disrupt two common assumptions: the fallacy of implied connections based on shared affiliations and the overlooked gender differences in networking pools, therefore exposing two previously unidentified gender data gaps.