The Networking Disadvantage: Why Traditional Networking Still Favors Men
You're at a company networking event, watching your male colleague effortlessly join a group discussing weekend golf plans while you politely wait for an opening to introduce yourself. He's just secured an invitation to play next Saturday with the VP of Sales, while you're left exchanging pleasantries about the weather. Sound familiar?
This isn't just bad luck or poor timing—it's the documented reality of how traditional networking systematically advantages men while creating invisible barriers for women. Despite decades of progress in workplace equality, new research reveals that the very structure of professional networking continues to favor men in ways that can't be solved by simply telling women to "lean in" harder.
The Data Doesn't Lie: Men Get More From Their Networks
A groundbreaking study published in the American Economic Review found what many women have long suspected: Male managers support their male subordinates more in their career progression, and this advantage comes directly from informal socializing—what researchers call "schmoozing."
The research, which analyzed employee data from a large Asian commercial bank, discovered that when employees have more face-to-face interactions with their managers, they are promoted at a higher rate. This mechanism could explain a third of the gender gap in promotions at this firm.
But here's where it gets particularly telling: To test whether this advantage really came from informal interactions, researchers looked at what happened when male employees who smoke were assigned to male managers who also smoke. The assumption? Smokers would naturally spend more time together during smoke breaks, creating opportunities for relationship-building that non-smokers wouldn't have. As expected, the researchers found a smoker-to-smoker advantage, equivalent in magnitude to the male-to-male advantage.
Think about that for a moment. The career advantage men gained simply from sharing cigarette breaks with their male managers was equivalent to the broader male networking advantage. These weren't formal mentoring relationships or structured professional development opportunities—these were casual conversations happening outside the building.
Why Women's Networks Work Differently
Other research reveals that the networking strategies that work for men often backfire for women. A study found that different types of networks helped new male and female MBAs land executive leadership positions. Researchers found that men benefit not so much from size of network but from being central in the MBA student network—or connected to multiple "hubs", people who have a lot of contacts across different groups of students.
For women, however, the equation was entirely different. Women need "private information," which may include insider tips about a company's leadership culture and politics, or hints about how to make an impression in a male-dominated industry. Most crucially, a 2019 study by researchers at Notre Dame and Northwestern Universities examined the social networks of successful men and women: for a man, the larger his network, the more likely he was to ascend to a high-ranking position. But for a woman, it wasn't network size that led to professional advancement — it was an inner circle of strong ties to two or three women with whom they communicated frequently that yielded the biggest gains.
The women with those close female relationships landed in leadership positions that were 2.5 times higher in authority and pay than their female peers who lacked that combination. This suggests that women need fundamentally different types of professional support—support that traditional networking rarely provides.
The "Old Boys' Club" Isn't Just a Metaphor
Research in academic medicine provides a stark illustration of how these networking disadvantages play out in practice. In a qualitative study of 52 women and 52 men academic medicine faculty members, participants identified a boys' club environment, characterized by gendered networking practices that advantaged men and disadvantaged women. Through gender-exclusive networking activities, such as golf, men established and maintained relationships with men faculty peers and built professional relationships with men in leadership positions.
The consequences were tangible and career-defining: These relationships yielded different types of benefits, including solidarity within their unit, research assignments, letters of recommendation, robust networks within and across institutions, and direct access to people in leadership positions. These benefits translated into concrete professional advantages such as opportunities to publish, weigh in on important decisions, garner letters of recommendation from colleagues outside of one's home institution, and nominations to professional societies.
One female participant in the study reported a particularly painful example: One woman's mentor took areas of her research away from her, and gave them to men in her lab he went golfing with. "I was not invited on the golf trips," she reported. "[My mentor] invited the boys on the golf trips."
The Double Bind: When Women Try to Network Like Men
The advice women often receive is to simply adopt male networking strategies—join the golf games, grab drinks after work, be more assertive. But research shows this approach often backfires. Traditional forms of networking, including the three-martini lunch or all-day golf outings, explicitly exclude women. Networking has shifted towards inclusivity, with formalized events open to all and structured to foster collegial exchange among diverse participants. However, networking often takes place outside of normal work hours and defined workspaces. Grueling schedules of after-work networking events excludes workers with families or care obligations who need or want to return home after work – typically most women.
Even when women can participate in these traditional networking activities, they face a different reception. While men's support for other men is considered a normal part of standard academic practice, women in academia may be accused of "favoritism" or "being too fanatical" if they "overdo" their support for other women.
The Psychology Behind the Disadvantage
The networking disadvantage isn't just about exclusion—it's also about how women approach professional relationships differently than men. Women, researchers have found, have been less frequent and avid networkers than men. They tend to be reluctant to mix business and pleasure; though women generally have more close friends than men do, research indicates that they are less likely to use their wider-ranging personal connections for professional advancement.
When women network, they are particularly concerned with "relational morality" — not wanting to ask for something without knowing when and how they can do something for the person in return. Women tend to make a request only after they've had a chance to forge a deeper connection.
Research on German corporate leaders found that women's tendencies to harbor moral concerns about 'exploiting' social ties causes them to under-benefit from networking activities. One interview participant explained: "Women look at networks from a social point of view. [...] They do not ask the question "How will this benefit me?" Men, on the other hand, focus on the opposite, placing less emphasis on personal relationships and make networking decisions for egoistic and instrumental motives."
The Pandemic Made Everything Worse
If traditional networking already disadvantaged women, the shift to remote work during the pandemic made things even more challenging. While a man is more likely to reach out to a contact with a quick request, women may default to a "relationship building" call, far less effective over phone or video.
The casual interactions that often precede meaningful professional relationships—running into someone in the hallway, grabbing coffee after a meeting, the spontaneous conversations that build trust—largely disappeared. Research published in Harvard Business Review found that the diversity of individual networks shrunk by close to 16% as people were more likely to connect with existing close contacts than with people they don't know. This drop-off is explained mainly by men, whose networks shrunk by 30%, while women's networks only reduced a little.
Ironically, while men's networks became more insular during the pandemic, they were already more powerful to begin with, so the impact was less damaging to their career prospects.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
The networking disadvantage isn't just frustrating—it has serious implications for gender equality in leadership. In 2020, women occupied less than 30% of the highest ranking positions across the world, and it has been predicted that gender equality in management will not be reached for another century.
Studies have shown that this gap cannot be exclusively attributed to women's lack of training or ambition: the gender dynamics of networking play an important role. When the informal systems that drive career advancement systematically favor one group over another, formal policies promoting equality can only go so far.
The Path Forward Isn't About Playing by Men's Rules
The solution isn't for women to somehow become better at traditional networking—research shows that diverse networks, not "old boys' clubs," are actually more effective for everyone. One study found that executives who consistently rank in the top 20% of their companies (both in terms of performance and employee wellbeing) have diverse networks, made up of people who come from a range of backgrounds, positions and levels within the organization.
Research by Ron Burt, a globally recognized network scientist, found that according to multiple peer-reviewed studies, simply being in an open network rather than a closed one is the best predictor of career success.
What Actually Works for Women
Given the research on how women's networks function differently, the most effective strategies focus on building the types of relationships that actually advance women's careers:
Prioritize Deep Connections with Other Women: The research is clear that women benefit most from close relationships with other women. These connections provide the "private information" about workplace dynamics and advancement strategies that women particularly need.
Seek Diverse Networks, Not Just Large Ones: Instead of trying to meet everyone at every networking event, focus on building relationships across different industries, levels, and backgrounds.
Create Structured Networking Opportunities: Since informal networking often excludes women, champion formal mentoring programs, women's leadership groups, and structured networking events within your organization.
Leverage Female Allies: When women endorse other women, they're also more likely to be seen as indirectly endorsing themselves. Make it a point to highlight other women's accomplishments and collaborate publicly.
Changing the System, Not Ourselves
The networking disadvantage reveals a fundamental truth: the problem isn't that women don't know how to network effectively. The problem is that the systems and structures we've built around professional advancement continue to reflect and reinforce male-dominated patterns of interaction.
Understanding the organization of networking in the new economy illuminates the ways in which powerful actors continually maintain their positions through workplace relationships and interactions across a variety of organizational contexts and industries.
Real change requires more than telling women to "network better." It requires recognizing that traditional networking creates systemic disadvantages and building new structures that actually work for everyone. It means valuing the relationship-building skills that women bring to professional interactions instead of penalizing women for not conforming to masculine networking norms.
Until we address these structural inequalities, we'll continue to see talented women struggle to advance not because they lack ability or ambition, but because the very systems designed to promote career growth continue to favor the people who've always had access to them.
The networking disadvantage is real, it's documented, and it's holding back half the workforce. The question is: what are we going to do about it?
