Global and team science approaches are on the rise, as is attention to the network underpinnings of gender disparities in scientific collaboration. Many network studies of men’s and women’s collaboration rely on bounded case studies of single disciplines and/or single countries and limited measures related to the collaborative process. We deploy network analysis on the scholarly database Scopus to gain insight into gender inequity across regions and subject areas and to better understand contextual underpinnings of stagnancy. Using a dataset of over 1.2 million authors and 144 million collaborative relationships, we capture international and unbounded co-authorship networks that include intra- and inter-disciplinary co-authorship ties across time (2009–2013). We describe how gender informs structural features and status differences in network relationships, focusing on men and women authors in 16 region-subject pairs. We pay particular attention to how connected authors are (first- and second-order degree centrality), attributes of authors’ collaborative relationships (including the “quality” and other characteristics of these ties), tendencies towards gender homophily (proportion of same-gender ties), and the nature of men’s and women’s interdisciplinary and international reach. Men have more advantageous first-order connections, yet second-order collaborative profiles look more similar. Men and women exhibit homophilous attachment to authors of the same gender, consistent over time. There is notable variation in the level of gender disparity within subjects across countries. We discuss this variation in the context of global trends in men’s and women’s scientific participation and cultural- and country-level influences on the organization and production of science.
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Whether, How, and Why Networks Influence Men’s and Women’s Career Success: Review and Research Agenda
Substantial research has documented challenges women experience building and benefiting from networks to achieve career success. Yet fundamental questions remain regarding which aspects of men’s and women’s networks differ and how differences impact their careers. To spur future research to address these questions, we present an integrative framework to clarify how and why gender and networks—in concert—may explain career inequality. We delineate two distinct, complementary explanations: (1) unequal network characteristics (UNC) asserts that men and women have different network characteristics, which account for differences in career success; (2) unequal network returns (UNR) asserts that even when men and women have the same network characteristics, they yield different degrees of career success. Further, we explain why UNC and UNR emerge by identifying mechanisms related to professional contexts, actors, and contacts. Using this framework, we review evidence of UNC and UNR for specific network characteristics. We found that men’s and women’s networks are similar in structure (i.e., size, openness, closeness, contacts’ average and structural status) but differ in composition (i.e., proportion of men, same-gender, and kin contacts). Many differences mattered for career success. We identified evidence of UNC only (same-gender contacts), UNR only (actors’ and contacts’ network openness, contacts’ relative status), neither UNC nor UNR (size), and both UNC and UNR (proportion of men contacts). Based on these initial findings, we offer guidance to organizations aiming to address inequality resulting from gender differences in network creation and utilization, and we present a research agenda for scholars to advance these efforts.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2054433
- PAR ID:
- 10215421
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Management
- Volume:
- 47
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0149-2063
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 207 to 236
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206320960529
