Gender differences in the creation of different types of social capital : A multilevel study
TL;DR: Men were shown to be more effective in creating hard social capital, but, unexpectedly, women were not found to be the emotional specialists they often are thought to be.
About: This article is published in Social Networks.The article was published on 2006-01-01. It has received 165 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Social mobility & Social status.
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TL;DR: The possibility hitherto neglected in the network literature that biases in friendship networks are triggered not just by the complexity of social relationships but also by the gender of those being perceived is investigated.
Abstract: Do women face bias in the social realm in which they are purported to excel? Across two different studies one organizational and one comprising MBA teams, we examined whether the friendship networks around women tend to be systematically misperceived and whether there were effects of these misperceptions on the women themselves and their teammates. Thus, we investigated the possibility hitherto neglected in the network literature that biases in friendship networks are triggered not just by the complexity of social relationships but also by the gender of those being perceived. Study 1 showed that, after controlling for actual network positions, men, relative to women, were perceived to occupy agentic brokerage roles in the friendship network-those roles involving less constraint and higher betweenness and outdegree centrality. Study 2 showed that if a team member misperceived a woman to occupy such roles, the woman was seen as competent but not warm. Furthermore, to the extent that gender stereotypes were endorsed by many individuals in the team, women performed worse on their individual tasks. But teams in which members fell back on well-rehearsed perceptions of gender roles men rather than women misperceived as brokers performed better than teams in which members tended toward misperceiving women occupying agentic brokerage roles. Taken together, these results contribute to unlocking the mechanisms by which social networks affect women's progress in organizations.
67 citations
Cites background from "Gender differences in the creation ..."
...People may perceive that men and women’s networks differ because men and women differ in the networks they inhabit (Van Emmerik 2006)....
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TL;DR: It is argued that network positions that afford independence and control over social resources are consistent with traditional masculine roles and may therefore affect men's sexual performance.
Abstract: This article combines relational perspectives on gender identity with social network structural perspectives on health to understand men's sexual functioning. The authors argue that network positions that afford independence and control over social resources are consistent with traditional masculine roles and may therefore affect men's sexual performance. For example, when a heterosexual man's female partner has more frequent contact with his confidants than he does—which the authors refer to as partner betweenness—his relational autonomy, privacy, and control are constrained. Analyses of data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) show that about a quarter of men experience partner betweennessa and that these men are 92% more likely to report erectile dysfunction. Partner betweenness is strongest among the youngest men in the sample, which may reflect changing conceptions of masculinity in later life. The authors consider several explanations for these findings and urge addition...
65 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of social networks in enabling access to private-vehicle transportation through getting rides and borrowing cars is examined, based on qualitative findings from ten focus group discussions with recent Mexican immigrants to California, half of whom have no car.
Abstract: We examine the role of social networks in enabling access to private-vehicle transportation, through getting rides and borrowing cars. Based on qualitative findings from ten focus group discussions with recent Mexican immigrants to California, half of whom have no car, we describe the extent to which participants depend on rides and borrowed cars for transportation. We highlight the unique aspects of informal access to cars, drawing on social exchange theory and related research to characterize the procurement process and likely levels of exchange. We discuss the implications of these findings for transportation services that might serve this and other community groups.
62 citations
TL;DR: Despite knowing how important social capital is and despite the fact that so much time, money, and attention is given to raising the status of women in managerial ranks, women have yet to achieve a...
Abstract: Despite knowing how important social capital is and despite the fact that so much time, money, and attention is given to raising the status of women in managerial ranks, women have yet to achieve a...
62 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the social capital foci (network ties) of mentoring relations and found that the sex of the protege and the mentor does not affect the quantity of network ties conveyed.
Abstract: Using questionnaire data obtained from a sample of state government managers, our study examines social capital foci (network ties) of mentoring relations. Others have shown that network ties are relevant to career development and advance. We begin with the assumption that enhanced network ties are generally beneficial. We investigate variation in mentorships, which enhance network ties within the focal organization and within organizations external to the focal organization. We examine a number of factors hypothesized as shaping the relationship between mentoring and the development of network ties, including attributes of the protege and of the mentoring relationship. Our results show that the sex of the protege and of the mentor does not affect the quantity of network ties conveyed. However, relationships in which protege and mentor sex is matched provide more network ties. Counter to our expectations, there is no significant difference in the amount and focus of network ties accruing from formal, orga...
61 citations
Cites background from "Gender differences in the creation ..."
...…2006), workplace mentoring and formation of social capital (Eby et al., 2006; Hezlett & Gibson, 2007), gender differences in social capital formation in networks (van Emmerik, 2006), and the use of social capital and mentoring in enabling entrepreneurial behavior (Davidsson & Honig, 2003)....
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References
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TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that the degree of overlap of two individuals' friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another, and the impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored.
Abstract: Analysis of social networks is suggested as a tool for linking micro and macro levels of sociological theory. The procedure is illustrated by elaboration of the macro implications of one aspect of small-scale interaction: the strength of dyadic ties. It is argued that the degree of overlap of two individuals' friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another. The impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored. Stress is laid on the cohesive power of weak ties. Most network models deal, implicitly, with strong ties, thus confining their applicability to small, well-defined groups. Emphasis on weak ties lends itself to discussion of relations between groups and to analysis of segments of social structure not easily defined in terms of primary groups.
37,560 citations
TL;DR: A new sex-role inventory is described that treats masculinity and femininity as two independent dimensions, thereby making it possible to characterize a person as masculine, feminine, or "androgynous" as a function of the difference between his or her endorsement of masculine and feminine personality characteristics.
Abstract: This article describes the development of a new sex-role inventory that treats masculinity and femininity as two independent dimensions, thereby making it possible to characterize a person as masculine, feminine, or "androgynous" as a function of the difference between his or her endorsement of masculine and feminine personality characteristics. Normative data are presented, as well as the results of various psychometric analyses. The major findings of conceptual interest are: (a) the dimensions of masculinity and femininity are empirically as well as logically independent; (6) the concept of psychological androgyny is a reliable one; and (c) highly sex-typed scores do not reflect a general tendency to respond in a socially desirable direction, but rather a specific tendency to describe oneself in accordance with sex-typed standards of desirable behavior for men and women. Both in psychology and in society at large, masculinity and femininity have long been conceptualized as bipolar ends of a single continuum; accordingly, a person has had to be either masculine or feminine, but not both. This sex-role dichotomy has served to obscure two very plausible hypotheses: first, that many individuals might be "androgynous" ; that is, they might be both masculine and feminine, both assertive and yielding, both instrumental and expressive—depending on the situational appropriateness of these various behaviors; and conversely, that strongly sex-typed individuals might be seriously limited in the range of behaviors available to them as they move from situation to situation. According to both Kagan (1964) and Kohlberg (1966), the highly sex-typed individual is motivated to keep his behavior consistent with an internalized sex-role standard, a goal that he presumably accomplishes by suppressing any behavior that might be con
7,984 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an argument and evidence for a structural ecology of social capital that describes how the value of an individual's social capital to an individual is contingent on the number of people doing the same work.
Abstract: I present argument and evidence for a structural ecology of social capital that describes how the value of social capital to an individual is contingent on the number of people doing the same work. The information and control benefits of bridging the structural holes—or, disconnections between nonredundant contacts in a network—that constitute social capital are especially valuable to managers with few peers. Such managers do not have the guiding frame of reference for behavior provided by numerous competitors, and the work they do does not have the legitimacy provided by numerous people doing the same kind of work. I use network and performance data on a probability sample of senior managers to show how the value of social capital, high on average for the managers, varies as a power function of the number of people doing the same work.
3,376 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the results of a study on organizational cultures in twenty units from ten different organizations in Denmark and the Netherlands, which came from in-depth interviews of selected informants and a questionnaire survey of a stratified random sample of organizational members.
Abstract: Geert Hofstede University of Limburg Bram Neuijen University of Groningen Denise Davat Ohayv Institute for Research on intercultural Cooperation Geert Sanders University of Groningen This paper presents the results of a study on organizational cultures in twenty units from ten different organizations in Denmark and the Netherlands. Data came from in-depth interviews of selected informants and a questionnaire survey of a stratified random sample of organizational members. Data on task, structure, and control characteristics of each unit were collected separately. Quantitative measures of the cultures of the twenty units, aggregated at the unit level, showed that a targe part of the differences among these twenty units could be explained by six factors, related to established concepts from organizational sociology, that measured the organizational cultures on six independent dimensions. The organizational culture differences found resided mainly at the levei of practices as perceived by members. Scores of the units on the six dimensions were partly explainable from organizational idiosyncrasies but were also significantly correlated with a variety of task, structural, and control-system characteristics of the units.
3,294 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a framework is developed for conceptualizing the processes that occur between dominants and tokens, and three perceptual phenomena are associated with tokens: visibility, polarization, and assimilation, where tokens' attributes are distorted to fit preexisting generalizations about their social type.
Abstract: Proportions, that is, relative numbers of socially and culturally different people in a group, are seen as critical in shaping interaction dinamics, and four group types are identified in the basis of varying proportional compositions. "Skewed" groups contain a large preponderance of one type (the numerical "dominants") over another (the rare "tokens"). A framework is developed for conceptualizing the processes that occur between dominants and tokens. Three perceptual phenomena are associated with tokens: visibility (tokens capture a disproportionate awareness share), polarization (differences between tokens and dominants are exaggerated), and assimilation (tokens' attributes are distorted to fit preexisting generalizations about their social type). Visibility generates performance pressures; polarization leads dominants to heighten their group boundaries; and assimilation leads to the tokens' role entrapment. Illustrations are drawn from a field study in a large industrial corporation. Concepts are exten...
2,426 citations