For professional women, having high-status connections can backfire

Women working in organizations are frequently encouraged to cultivate connections to high-status individuals based on a prominent social network theory. But new research suggests that having high-status connections can backfire for women.

The study appears in the journal Organizational Science.

What the researchers say: “Our findings reveal a social-network dilemma for women that is contrary to a widely accepted belief that women should build their network with high-status individuals,” said the study’s coauthor. “High-status network contacts may be necessary for success, but they create an extra social perceptual hurdle for women to overcome.”

Women working in organizations are, on average, less successful than men: They are proportionally under-represented in management, receive less credit for their contributions, and are not as valued for their expertise. A common recommendation for women to gain prominence in organizations is to forge connections with high-status others, by seeking advice from them or obtaining mentorship or sponsorship from high-status people. By having these networks, it is assumed, women can close the status gap with their male counterparts.

Social networks are valuable for two reasons. First, high-status connections can provide valuable information and resources, which can help women achieve. Second, individuals’ networks may also shape how they are perceived and evaluated by people around them. In this way, having a network with many high-status contacts should ostensibly enhance individuals’ status (e.g., respect, admiration, influence). But this is where things do not work as planned for women: women with high-status contacts actually lose status.

This is a surprising finding given that there’s an established scientific literature showing that high-status networks positively shape the status of the individual. However, a closer look at this research shows that most studies demonstrating this effect have been of male participants and have simply assumed that the same effects accrue to women.

In this work, researchers examined the gender-differentiated perceptions of observers as they evaluated an individual’s network. In doing so, they sought to form a more complete picture of how women’s network ties affected their attainment of status in groups. They conducted five studies with a total of nearly 2,800 individuals.

The studies concluded that compared to women with ties to lower-status contacts, women with ties to high-status contacts had less respect and admiration from other group members. Women who made ties to higher-status people were seen as being higher in dominance. Women who are dominant are subject to social penalties. This is because dominant women are seen as violating gender norms of communality (an individual’s focus on others’ needs over self-interests). The findings clarify the important yet underdeveloped aspect of how social perceptions of networks combine with gender roles in predicting the effects of networks at the interpersonal level.

“By revealing an unfortunate obstacle that women may face—the natural tendency of people to socially penalize women with high-status contacts—our research increases awareness of this bias so organizations can work against it and eradicate this form of gender inequality,” the researchers explained. Managers should strive for greater structural changes to organizations (e.g., by promoting formal mentor programs, initiating sensitivity training to reduce biases) to help women harness the benefits of high-status contacts while reducing the status costs,” the lead researcher said.

One bright side was that women who explicitly demonstrated that they were forming high-status ties for the sake of the group were spared the social backlash. This means that women and organizations can take tangible steps to reframe network building activities to protect the status perception of women building their networks. For instance, reframing network events to “lunch and learn” events could ease the social pressures off of agentic women.

So, what? This multinational study has produced some fascinating results. These are going to cause ructions in many business schools.

What’s not clear from the study was the gender of those who thought the less of women for having high status contacts. My gut, from research that we’ve done in a multitude of organizations, is that the majority are other women. We have noticed a high degree of what’s called “horizontal violence” between women and resentment against those who are high achievers.