Women, Work and Networks

1. Women, Work and Networks Pip Pattison School of Behavioural Science University of Melbourne Centre for Public Policy Forum on Women and Work, 30th November, 2004

2. A network perspective on women and work Women and academic work a local view Work and networks in organisations ideas from the literature Women and organisational networks the empirical literature Modelling networks in a professional organisation case study of a law firm Women, academic work and networks reflections

3. Women and academic work Bailyn (2003): academic (and other professional) work is characterised by overload we do many different things at once we do many long-term things at once our work is never finished we never have nothing to do Balancing work and outside responsibilities and interests is a particular challenge for academics, and perhaps especially for women

4. Distribution of academic staff across levels by gender: Faculty of MDHS, 2003 Male Female Level % % A 9 63 B 23 23 C 32 19 D 22 4 E 14 1 Total 100 100

5. Mobility across segmented labour market boundaries (McBrier, 2003) Segmentation of the academic labour market: primary jobs (located within an internal labour market, eg continuing T&R) secondary jobs (located within an external labour market eg contract RO) In many professional domains, women move more slowly: up professional career ladders within the primary labour market across secondary-primary job boundaries A long time spent in the secondary market can mean: accumulation of nontransferable skills (erosion of human capital) failure to accumulate/maintain primary contacts (erosion of social capital)

6. Promotion 1995-2004 in MDHS as a function of staff classification and gender: RO staff Promotion: n gender % promoted From Level A to B 433 F 14 187 M 29 From Level B to C 131 F 21 96 M 24 From Level C to D 44 F 23 47 M 23  From Level D to E 17 F 18 18 M 11

7. Promotion in MDHS as a function of staff classification and gender: T&R staff Promotion: n gender % promoted From Level A to B 61 F 36 44 M 36 From Level B to C 155 F 22 119 M 38 From Level C to D 176 F 17 173 M 22 From Level D to E 45 F 11 115 M 16

8. Research only staff in MDHS

9. Teaching & research staff in MDHS[promotion from level B to level C]

10. Metaphors of the career construction industry Glass ceiling Sticky floor* Leaky pipeline Chilly climate Ghettoization

11. Networks and work Getting into the workforce Informal networks help workers to obtain jobs eg Granovetter (1974) Getting a Job Recruitment through informal networks (rather than open recruitment) is associated with more male appointments to management positions Reskin & McBrier (2000) Prospering in the workplace Informal networks within organizations define a shadow structure, where employees build alliances, trade organizational resources and manage their reputations eg Kanter (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation

12. Ronald Burt (in press): Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital Informal relations tend to form a small world of relatively dense clusters separated by structural holes. People whose networks bridge the holes are brokers.

13. Network of Mutual Collaboration Ties (Lazega, 2001)

14. Ronald Burt on Brokerage and Closure, continued Burt provides evidence that across a range of organizations: 1. Brokers do better: they get more positive individual and team evaluations, higher compensation, faster promotion 2. Brokers do better because of improved vision – they are at greater risk of having creative ideas and/or of seeing how to implement ideas 3. Network clustering reinforces the status quo, and amplifies strong relations to extremes of trust and distrust, deepening structural holes 4. Network clustering around the bridges creates reputation pressures that encourage the trust and collaboration needed to deliver the value of brokerage

15. Some other important network properties Density Clustering Connectivity/ centralisation

16. Women and networks at work Herminia Ibarra (1992, 1993): network mechanisms that create and reinforce gender inequality in the organizational distribution of power In an advertising agency, women were found to have: smaller proportion of same-sex network ties more differentiated instrumental and expressive ties fewer same-sex multiplex ties less dense networks fewer ties to more influential people lower network centrality Scott (1996) on women in corporate-government affairs less interaction with those at top levels less likely to socialise with work partners more likely to interact with those at similar levels spontaneous women’s networks

17. How do networks evolve? What factors affect the formation of a network tie? Individual attributes Gender? Personality? Status? Dyadic attributes Homophily (eg same gender)? Heterophily (eg higher status)? Opportunity through shared settings? Intrinsic network processes Network ties create opportunities for the formation of further network ties

18. Mutual collaboration ties for partners in a law firm (Lazega, 2001) Colour codes practice (green=corporate), node size codes tenure

19. Beginning to assess accounts of network tie formation: Modelling collaboration in a law firm (early 1990s) Parameter * estimate s.e. Clustering effect** 0.608 0.089 Seniority main effect 0.024 0.006 Practice (corp. law) main effect 0.375 0.109 Same practice 0.385 0.101 Same gender 0.359 0.120 Same office 0.572 0.100 *exponential random graph model **alternating k-triangles [Snijders, Pattison, Robins & Handcock, 2004]

20. Prospects and challenges From our local context: support for effectiveness of EO policy and mentoring programs at senior levels we may need to pay more attention to entry level positions problems of the “secondary labour market” From the literature on networks and work, we learn something about the operation of the “shadow structure”: reputation from network closure vision from network bridging influence from network access to “resources” But what personal and situational factors, and what interpersonal processes facilitate: creation and maintenance of bridging ties? the capacity of an individual to build and maintain both bridge ties and cluster membership? creation and maintenance of ties with high status members?

21. Prospects and challenges, continued From the literature on women’s networks at work, we see that women’s networks may be: less likely to include high status members less likely to enjoy the reputational benefits of closure in instrumental networks but more likely to contain bridge ties? What interventions might mitigate against gender inequality through network mechnaisms? Open recruitment EO and mentor programs Structures that facilitate “mixing” so that genuine work-relevant network processes (still in need of further understanding) take over from individual attributes and homophily in the evolution of informal work networks

22. A side benefit? Three notions of EO in the academy (Bailyn, 2003) Legal equality: equal pay, equal access to opportunities to enter a profession and to advance in it; freedom from harassment Fairness: equal opportunity is not equitable if the constraints are unequal (eg if there are systematic differences in capacity to give full priority to academic work) Integration: work practices, structures and cultural definitions of competence and success embedded in the belief in, and acceptance of, an academic worker whose identity and commitments are legitimately anchored in both the occupational and the private world