Women often need stronger and more complex professional networks than men to reach corporate leadership roles, according to a new Western-led study analyzing 20 years of data from more than 19,000 employees.
Cristián Bravo, Canada Research Chair in Banking and Insurance Analytics, and his collaborators analyzed publicly available data on the corporate leadership of 772 publicly traded Canadian firms between 2000 and 2022 and found women generally need larger and more complex professional networks than men to reach the top ranks of corporate leadership. (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)
The research, published on March 12 by the high impact journal Cell Patterns, also found that women with professional connections to other female leaders were more likely to be promoted.
"Understanding how people get to these high-level positions can help us design effective interventions to support people across their careers, either at a policy level or through internal corporate governance," said senior author Cristián Bravo, Canada Research Chair in Banking and Insurance Analytics. "We need to support people from the very beginning. We can't just start when they're already senior managers."
Despite incremental improvements in the past decade, women remain underrepresented in corporate boardrooms. Though networks are undoubtedly vital for career advancement, it's not clear which networks are most influential or whether certain networks are helping or hindering initiatives to improve gender disparity, say the researchers.
