Most networking advice is gender-neutral. It tells everyone the same thing: meet more people, get to know the well-connected ones, be memorable.
A study published in 2019 found that for women, following that advice closely produces worse outcomes than not following it.
What the research found
Yang Yang, Nitesh Chawla and Brian Uzzi — researchers at Northwestern’s Kellogg School and the University of Notre Dame — analysed the communication networks of graduate business students and tracked where they were placed afterwards. The work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
For men, the finding was simple. Being central in the network predicted better placement, and that was essentially the whole story. Men in the top quarter for centrality were placed at a level about 1.5 times higher than men in the bottom quarter.
Women needed centrality too. But the high-placing women had something the men didn’t need: an inner circle made up mostly of other women, each connected to different people outside the circle.
Women who had both — high centrality and a female-dominated inner circle — were placed at levels about 2.5 times higher than women with low centrality and a male-dominated inner circle.
And the finding that matters most: women whose networks looked like those of the most successful men tended to be placed low, despite qualifications comparable to the women who did well.
Why the inner circle matters
The researchers’ explanation is the useful part. Broad connections give everyone access to public information about opportunities. A close circle of women provides something else: gender-specific private information that matters more in a market dominated by men.
Concretely, that means things nobody publishes. What a woman in a comparable role was actually paid. Which firms are genuinely good to women and which only say so. How a negotiation actually went, including the parts where it went badly. Whether that thing that happened to you is normal or a warning sign.
You can’t get that information from a well-connected man, however generous he is, because he hasn’t experienced it. And you rarely get it at a large mixed event, because people don’t share it in public.
The other reasons it’s different
People connect with people like them. Researchers call it homophily, and it’s one of the most robust findings in network science. Since men still hold more senior positions, a natural tendency toward similar people gives men easier access to the people who can open doors.
The same behaviour reads differently. A man building a close relationship with a senior male colleague is networking. A woman doing the same with a senior man is frequently read through a different lens, and she knows it, which makes those relationships more costly to build.
Mentoring has become more cautious. Surveys since the #MeToo period have found a notable share of male managers reporting discomfort with one-to-one mentoring of women. The caution is understandable and the effect is real: fewer informal routes to the kind of senior support that moves careers.
What this means for business owners
The study looked at graduate students entering corporate roles, so it’s worth being careful about how far it extends. But the mechanism — that women need private information that broad networks don’t supply — applies at least as strongly to women running businesses.
If anything, more so. An employee has an HR department, a salary band, colleagues to compare with. A business owner has none of that. What to charge, how to handle a client who won’t pay, whether to hire, what other women in your position are actually earning — the only reliable source is other women doing the same thing.
What to do with this
Build a small inner circle deliberately. Two to four women at a similar stage, in different fields so you’re not competitors, who’ll tell you the truth. This isn’t a networking group — it’s closer to a standing arrangement to be honest with each other.
Keep the broad network too. The study found women needed both. The inner circle supplies the private information; the wider network supplies reach and access. Neither works alone.
Make sure your circle’s members know different people. The research specified inner-circle contacts connected to many non-overlapping third parties. Four friends who all know the same people give you less than four who each open a different door.
Ask the specific questions. The value is entirely in the private information, which only flows if someone asks. “What do you charge for that?” “What did they offer you?” “Has this happened to you?” Those questions feel awkward and they’re the whole point.
And give it back. These relationships work on reciprocity, and the woman willing to share her own numbers first usually gets the most honest answers in return.
A personal note
I started the Women’s Entrepreneur Network years before this study was published, for a reason I could describe but not prove: women in business needed somewhere to exchange the information they couldn’t get anywhere else.
It’s now more than 77,000 members, and the most valuable thing that happens in it is exactly what this research describes. Someone asks what to charge, and other women who’ve done it answer with real numbers.
It’s satisfying when the research catches up with what you already knew. It’s more useful to know it’s not just a feeling.
