Gender Homophily Research Articles

Partnership Ties Shape Friendship Networks: A Dynamic Social Network Study

Partnership ties shape friendship networks through different social forces. First, partnership ties drive clustering in friendship networks: individuals who are in a partnership tend to have common friends and befriend other couples. Second, partnership ties influence the level of homophily in these emerging friendship clusters. Partners tend to be similar in a number of attributes (homogamy). If one partner selects friends based on preferences for homophily, then the other partner may befriend the same person regardless of whether they also have homophilic preferences. Thus, two homophilic ties emerge based on a single partner's preferences. This amplification of homophily can be observed in many attributes (e.g., ethnicity, religion, age). Gender homophily, however, may be de-amplified, as the gender of partners differs in hetero-sexual partnerships. In our study, we follow dynamic friendship formation among 126 individuals and their cohabiting partners in a university-related graduate housing community over a period of nine months ( N = 2,250 self-reported friendship relations). We find that partnership ties strongly shape the dynamic process of friendship formation. They are a main driver of local network clustering and explain a striking amount of homophily.

Gender Homophily, Ph.D. Completion, and Time to Degree in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences

Doctoral programs in the humanities and humanistic social sciences contend with relatively lower graduation rates and longer duration to degree. While reforming graduate education can include changes to financial aid awards and program requirements, enhancements in the area of advising can also improve student educational experiences and outcomes within existing institutional structures. The frequency of advisor-advisee communications during the dissertation process, as well as the advisor’s attitude toward dissertation completion, influences program duration. Moreover, gender homophily, or same-gender mentorship, is associated with higher graduation probabilities for women doctoral students.

Friendship and Study Assistance Ties of University Students

We analyze the characteristics of the social networks of students studying in the economics department in one Russian university. We focus on student friendship and study assistance ties and demonstrate how these networks are connected with the individual characteristics of students and their peers. We find that the probability of a tie existing is explained by the gender homophily, and initial student assignment to the same exogenously defined study group. Students ask for help and form friendships with students who have similar academic achievements. Academically successful students are more popular in study assistance networks while there is no gender difference in student popularity in both networks. Our findings enhance the understanding of the role of friendship and study assistance ties in the formation of peer group effects.

Gender and Ethnic Homophily in Organizational Culture Perception: A Social Network View

Studies of organizational culture perception from a social network view have found that structural antecedents such as individuals’ unique network position and embeddedness in strong cliques (Simmelian ties) influence the degree to which individuals share similar perceptions of the organizational social network. However, studies have not considered other factors which might contribute to perceptual similarity, specifically the role of homophily, or similarity based on gender and ethnic sub-group membership. In this study, we test the link between gender/ethnic homophily and network perceptions using cognitive social structure data collected from the technical call center of a US manufacturing firm. Our results indicate that both gender and ethnic homophily influence shared perceptions of the organization beyond structural antecedents. Post-hoc analysis shows that both majority and minority ethnic subgroups exhibited similarities of network perception, showing that homophily effects were not limited to the dominant ethnic group. Such effects were found across both positive and negative tie networks as well. Implications and limitations are also discussed.

Gender homophily from spatial behavior in a primary school: A sociometric study

We investigate gender homophily in the spatial proximity of children (6–12 years old) in a French primary school, using time-resolved data on face-to-face proximity recorded by means of wearable sensors. For strong ties, i.e., for pairs of children who interact more than a defined threshold, we find statistical evidence of gender preference that increases with grade. For weak ties, conversely, gender homophily is negatively correlated with grade for girls, and positively correlated with grade for boys. This different evolution with grade of weak and strong ties exposes a contrasted picture of gender homophily.

Science Networks in Cutting-edge Research Institutions: Gender Homophily and Embeddedness in Formal and Informal Networks

Female researchers are underrepresented in leading academic positions. Literature has referred to networks as a central factor for sex differences in scientific careers. The present study analyses the interrelations between formal and informal science networks and focuses on gender homophily as a driver for structural embeddedness. Applying QAP network correlation analysis on the principal investigators of two institutions from the German Excellence Initiative, gender homophily minorly influences the involvement in research cooperation, research support and social acquaintance networks. Other similarity variables seem to be more strongly related to integration in science networks, namely, research area, geographic dispersal and academic status.

What Friendship Entails: An Empirical Analysis of Graduate Students’ Social Networks

This article uses network analysis to explore interpersonal relationships among three cohorts of sociology graduate students. We examine the content of graduate student relationships to consider questions of friendship formation among adults in a naturally bounded university setting. Drawing on existing research on friendship formation, we also analyze the extent to which tendencies toward race and gender homophily persist among graduate students. We find that graduate students’ friendships tend to be at low levels of intimacy and gender and race homophilous. We discuss these findings in the context of recent research showing that American adults have fewer intimate relationships, and discuss the implications of race and gender based exclusionary friendship networks for the discipline of sociology as well as within broader organizational contexts.

Distance matters: Exploring proximity and homophily in virtual world networks

Distance has long been a powerful force that influences the ways in which we organize our personal relationships and collaborations. In the past two decades, globalization and the advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have brought profound changes to the formation and maintenance of communication networks in contemporary work and social settings by eliminating the constraints of physical distance on human interaction. To study the role of distance in ICT-enabled virtual worlds, we propose three dimensions of proximity—space, time, and homophily—and analyze the impact of distance, time zones, gender, age, and game age on building collaborative relations in online games. The results show that spatial proximity, temporal proximity, and homophily in age and game age still have a strong impact on players' behavior in creating online relations in virtual worlds, however, there is no evidence of gender homophily. This study suggests that offline proximity plays an important role in bringing people together in virtual worlds.

National culture and friendship homophily in the multinational workplace

This article argues that cultural differences can be understood in terms of demographic homophily patterns. We test this argument by comparing friendship homophily in nationality and gender between two cultural groups (Korean and American employees) from within a multi-national corporation. Korean employees showed stronger nationality homophily owing to their collectivistic values. Confucian culture strengthened the gender homophily of the East Asian employees, especially female employees. Finally, compared to the Korean employees, the affective closeness of the US employees’ friendship ties was significantly affected by friendship tie multiplexity, showing this group's instrumental disposition.

Discretion within the Constraints of Opportunity: Gender Homophily and Structure in a Formal Organization

Homophily in social relations results from both individual preferences and selective opportunities for interaction, but how these two mechanisms interact in large, contemporary organizations is not well understood. We argue that organizational structures and geography delimit opportunities for interaction such that actors have a greater level of discretion to choose their interaction partners within business units, job functions, offices and quasi-formal structures. This leads us to expect to find a higher proportion of homophilous interactions within these organizational structures than across their boundaries. We test our theory in an analysis of the rate of dyadic communication in an e-mail data set comprising thousands of employees in a large information technology firm. These findings have implications for research on homophily, gender relations in organizations, and formal and informal organizational structure.

Personal Network Maintenance, Face-to-Face Interaction, and Distance

Taking as a departing point the general agreement in the literature about the complementary role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in social activity travel, the paper focuses on the interplay between different media (face to face, telephone, Internet based) in personal network maintenance, with a special focus on the relevance of distance and socioeconomics. Through an explicit social-structure approach, social networks were conceived of as personal communication systems that people would use to stay socially connected. Using data gathered recently in Concepción, Chile, the study focused on two neighborhoods distinctive because of their income levels. The study examined the interplay between ICT availability and use, the frequency of face-to-face interaction, and the role of distance. Quantitative methods were used to study the specific contexts in which ICT complements face-to-face interaction by identifying the role of distance and key characteristics of egos and alters and the personal networks in which they are embedded. [The author defines “alter” as “social contact.” —Ed.] The results suggest that, after controlling for demographics, telephone and Internet have specialized functions, depending on the ego–alter relationship in aspects such as roles, distance, length of the relationship, and age and gender homophily. Therefore, the complementary effect of ICT in social activities is mediated by the social context in which these interactions occur and highlights the relevance of the particularities of the spatial, socioeconomic, and social structure in which social relations are embedded.

Gender Clustering in Friendship Networks: Some Sociological Implications

This paper uses a social network approach to examine gender clustering in a complete network of teenagers and their friends. It demonstrates the advantages of using increasingly sophisticated social network techniques, including clustering coefficients and their visualization, and social selection models within the ERGM framework, to visualize and explain the process of clustering which takes place in teenagers' networks. The paper supports previous findings of gender homophily among teenagers in small cliques of friends, provides evidence of clustering among larger groups of friends that differs by gender and evidence that the process of clustering also differs by gender. Males make more friends and form larger clusters than females. Differences in clustering are due to differences in selection (males make more friends), triadic closure (more likely for females) and endogenous effects (impacting more on males). These findings have sociological implications for single-gender and cross-gender influences on teenagers' behaviour, and for the presumed importance of agency (selection) over structure (endogenous effects) on friendship formation.

Homophily in MySpace

AbstractSocial network sites like MySpace are increasingly important environments for expressing and maintaining interpersonal connections, but does online communication exacerbate or ameliorate the known tendency for offline friendships to form between similar people (homophily)? This article reports an exploratory study of the similarity between the reported attributes of pairs of active MySpace Friends based upon a systematic sample of 2,567 members joining on June 18, 2007 and Friends who commented on their profile. The results showed no evidence of gender homophily but significant evidence of homophily for ethnicity, religion, age, country, marital status, attitude towards children, sexual orientation, and reason for joining MySpace. There were also some imbalances: women and the young were disproportionately commenters, and commenters tended to have more Friends than commentees. Overall, it seems that although traditional sources of homophily are thriving in MySpace networks of active public connections, gender homophily has completely disappeared. Finally, the method used has wide potential for investigating and partially tracking homophily in society, providing early warning of socially divisive trends.

Importance of gender homophily in the computer science classroom

This study explores how particular communication behaviors influence women's experience of the CS classroom in the United States. In particular, it investigates the correlation between students' perceived gender similarities with others in the CS discipline or homophily, their feelings about the closeness and openness of communication between people or immediacy, the resulting presence or absence of a supportive communication classroom climate, which is understood as a set of systemic entities whose presence and dimensionality may be inferred from students' and teachers' perceptions of psychosocial attributes of the classroom social system, and finally, their intention to remain in the CS program.

Correction [to "Importance of gender homophily in the computer science classroom" (Summer 07 43-47

In the above titled paper (ibid., vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 43-47, Summer 07), typographical errors appeared in several places. The corrected text is presented here.

MULTISOURCE FEEDBACK, COACHING, AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: GENDER HOMOPHILY IN COACHING DYADS.

This study examines some factors that influence the effectiveness of multisource feedback that has been facilitated by an executive coach. Participants were 89 senior managers from a globally opera...

"We Work as a Team Really": Gender Homophily on Australian Cotton Farms

This paper is based on an ongoing study that looks at farm management practices by Australian women cotton growers using farm management software, most particularly an agricultural decision support system, CottonLOGIC. The study is informed through a theoretical framework of structuration theory as a metatheory for probing the recursiveness of farm management and technology usage, and diffusion of innovations theory as a lower-level theory for analysing software adoption characteristics. Empirical research indicates that effective information exchange flows from homophilous communication. In this paper, the principles of homophily and heterophily in communication networks were initially drawn from diffusion theory. The findings suggest that despite apparent gender disparities, the presence of empathy and shared goals between farming partners overrides ‘gender heterophily’ to become gender homophily. Therefore cotton growers are informed of scientific research through homophilous communication, influencing the construction and reconstruction of innovative software usage and existing farm management practices.

Gender-Specific Use of the Domestic Telephone

The paper is based on a study on the uses of the telephone in 317 French homes. Detailed billing data over four months were collected and compared with interviews concerning each regular phone user in the household. We focus here on the correlation between the observed duration of phone calls and the gender of callers and receivers. The reasons why women telephone more are discussed and related to the gender homophily in telephone networks. Data also show that the duration of phone calls depends on the receiver's gender. We suggest that politeness rules may govern the telephone call, did we argue that these civility rules explain in part why the receiver's gender exerts the greatest effect on how the call is managed and on its overall duration. We propose to explore the hypothesis that telephone calls have an interactional format similar to that of a visit, but that status differences between caller and receiver may influence the unfolding of interactions between men and women through the caller's adjustment of his or her interaction style to the receiver's gender.

Gender on a Jagged Edge

The security industry has seen an influx of women in recent decades. Although some have been resegregated into relatively poorly rewarded jobs seen as suitable for women, some have found better jobs or jobs usually seen as “men's work.” We trace these variable outcomes to the flexibility of ideas about jobs and gender, the greater power of ideas about gender relationships, the tension between gender homophily and gender status expectations, relationships to clients and targets (people dealt with for the client), and client and target gender. Gender ideas, inequality, and segregation are both reproduced and revised in the security industry.

Friendship in School: Gender and Racial Homophily

This article analyzes the development of racial and gender homophily in a population of 2,135 schoolchildren, grades 3-12, in all public schools in a biracial Southern community. Sociometric friendship nominations were used to examine changes in racial and gender segregation and preference. The results suggest that for these major status variables, the relationship between homophily and grade is curvilinear, first increasing because of increments in racial homophily from elementary to middle school (while gender homophily remains stable), then decreasing owing to the decline of gender homophily from middle school onward (while racial homophily remains stable). The findings are most consistent with theories that give the middle school a prominent role in shaping peer relations.