Executive board positions are rarely advertised on standard job boards. Instead, reaching the top of the corporate ladder requires powerful networking, and a ground-breaking new study reveals that women must build far more complex social and professional webs than men to secure those high-level roles.
Published in the Cell Press journal Patterns, the research analysed 20 years of publicly available data from 772 publicly traded Canadian firms. Using an AI deep-learning model, the team retrospectively mapped the career evolution of 19,395 senior employees — including 15,167 men and 4,228 women — from 2000 to 2022 to examine how social and professional networks influenced their advancement.
First author and financial mathematician Yuhao (Jet) Zhou from Western University in Canada explained the motivation: “You don’t see job postings for executives or board positions, because those high-level positions are more grounded in network-based relationships. Our goal was to obtain a clearer view of how gender interactions within networks shape the path to board appointments.”
The networking gender divide
When comparing individuals with similar demographics, education, and professional experience, the researchers found a stark difference in how the two genders advance to the boardroom.
- The path for men: The likelihood of a man attaining a director-level position was predominantly determined by his current employment.
- The path for women: Conversely, a woman’s success was weighed heavily against her past employment and social networks, including active memberships in charities, clubs, and organisations.
Co-author and mathematical modeller María Óskarsdóttir of the University of Southampton highlighted the disparity: “The women who are making it to the top have to be excellent at everything. It’s not clear whether this is because that is what is demanded of women to succeed, or because there are fewer opportunities for women, so only the truly exceptional women make it.”
Lifting each other up
The AI analysis also investigated how existing board members actively assist the advancement of others within their networks. The data revealed a powerful trend of solidarity: women who successfully advanced to director-level positions were highly likely to be well-connected to other female leaders.
“Women that have been promoted to directors have been helping bring other women up,” said senior author Cristián Bravo. “These women are acting as bridges between communities that the traditional circles don’t easily reach because of structural inequalities that we have been dragging on for decades.”
Ultimately, 17 per cent of the men and 19.4 per cent of the women in the dataset secured director positions, with the researchers noting a gradual increase in first-time female appointments following Canadian gender diversity initiatives launched in 2015.
The research team hopes that illuminating these invisible social processes will help organisations design better governance policies to support employees from the very beginning of their careers, rather than waiting until they reach senior management.
