I’ve got a few things I want to draw to the attention of Leaving Academia readers, so it’s a link-roundup kinda Friday.
- Canadians: are you aware that the federal government has re-opened their post-secondary recruitment campaign? Most job ads close October 8th, so you’ve got a week to whip your application together.
- Thanks to @jovanevery’s introduction on Twitter, I’ve found out about the very busy Raul Pacheco-Vega (that’s @raulpacheco in Twitter-speak). I haven’t had a chance to talk much with Raul, but I thought you should know about him because he has managed to bridge the divide between scholarly research and consulting. And no, he’s not a computer guy. Water is his thing.
- I’ve also been thinking about this piece over here at The Ladders which claims that “men have stronger professional networks than women.” This is based on research by two American sociologists who found that
“both men and women tend to build networks comprising people of their own gender — a process known scientifically as homophily and colloquially as “birds of a feather flock together.” But women tend to recognize the tendency and try to overcome it — building networks made up of about 50 percent men — while men’s networks included very few women, Torres said.
“According to Torres’ and Huffman’s theory of social networking: Because men hold 80 percent of the jobs in senior management (a figure that has been steadily declining), they are more likely to hear about job openings at the senior-management level. Men pass the news on to their mostly male social networks, and it is likely that news about the job opening reaches women only after it has reached and passed several men.”
And sociologist William Bielby adds:
“Women have tended to be better connected overall, but they and many of their female contacts tend to work in more female-dominated jobs,” Bielby said. “So their networks may be wider but not reach to as high a level as men’s, who tend to be better connected, particularly in getting professional news, to more high-status people.”
Hmmm. Something to think about when you’re cultivating your networks. The advice the article supplies in response to this problem?
“If women want to equal the effectiveness of male social networks, they need to emulate the men in those networks, said Torres. If male-dominated professional networks are passing jobs leads to other men before women, women should put themselves in the path of those leads, Bielby said. Women must add more men — especially high-status men — to their professional networks. Furthermore, they need to make their interests and competencies as clear as possible, he said.”
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