Networking is widely believed to be crucial to success both in our careers and in life more generally.  A recent study suggests that women tend to have poorer social networks, and examines some of the reasons why this might be so.

The study, which was published in Human Relations, suggests that women can often undersell themselves, and this lack of confidence manifests itself in hesitation and excessive modesty.

Now, caveat time, for the research was conducted via interviews with 37 high-profile female leaders working at German companies, so the sample is neither very large or very diverse.  This has to hedge the findings against previous work suggesting that women tend to have higher emotional intelligence and the kind of soft skills usually quite valuable when forming relationships with others.

Nonetheless, the interviews revealed that the women would often have moral concerns about exploiting their social network, and this therefore results in networking having limited value.  This is then exacerbated by a tendency to underestimate their abilities and undersell their value.

“These considerations provide a clear explanation for women’s hesitations to capitalise on social ties and for the consequent ineffectiveness of their professional networking efforts compared to those of their male counterparts,” the authors say.

Under-utilizing connections

The women in the study were keen not to be seen to benefit excessively from their connections, whilst hoping to emphasize the moral aspects of their network.  When this was combined with underestimating and/or poorly demonstrating their own talents and achievements, it led to poor outcomes.

“We hope that this paper’s findings will motivate women to scrutinize their positioning in networks and encourage them to interact more proactively and less reservedly with powerful social contacts. Women’s tendencies to underestimate their value in professional networks and on the job market are at odds with the demand for qualified women. Instead women can be convinced of their qualities and of their resulting objective ‘professional value’ and engage proactively in the powerful networks that they are likely to benefit from and valuably contribute to,” the authors conclude.

As mentioned earlier, with a relatively small sample, it would perhaps be wrong to draw too many conclusions from the findings, but they might nonetheless provide grist for the mill.