In a male-dominated world, women who communicate often with a female-dominated clique are stand a better chance of earning high ranking leadership positions.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discovered that more than 75 percent of noble women have maintained a female-dominated inner circle to 2-3 women whom they communicate with regularly.
However, male counterparts are more likely to succeed with a larger the network regardless of gender.
According to the study author Nitesh Chawla, professor of computer science and engineering at University of Norte Dame, women who have a social networks that similar to the male are more likely to hold low-ranking positions.
“Although both genders benefit from developing large social networks after graduate school, women’s communication patterns as well as the gender composition of their network, significantly predict their job placement level,” said Prof Chawla.
He adds that communication patterns and gender composition of a social network have no significant effect for men landing high -ranking positions.
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The researchers studied 700 former graduate of a business school by comparing three variables of the participants: size of the social network, promotion of same gender contacts and the amount of strong versus weak network ties.
“Women with a high network centrality and a female-dominated inner circle have an expected job placement level that is 2.5 times greater than women with low network centrality and a male-dominated inner circle,” said study co-author Frank Freeman the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications of Northwestern University.
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Nonetheless, female-dominated inner circles can help women gain gender-specific information that would be more important in a male-dominated job market.
“We also saw that inner circles benefit from each other, suggesting that women gain gender-specific private information and support from their inner circle, while non-overlapping connections provide other job market details,” said Chawla.
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