New Insights into Gender Inequality

Nir Halevy, graduate of the School of Business at Stanford University, and Professor Yuval Kalish of the Chair of Leadership, Networks, and Organizations at WHU, explore how men and women may differ in their method of brokering new relationships. In “Broadening versus deepening: Gender and brokering in social networks,” published in Social Psychology and Personality Science, Haveli and Professor Kalish examine one’s tendency to introduce members of their own network to others—i.e., to broker relationships.

After two experiments, the research duo found that, compared to men, women are more likely to deepen their network by introducing friends (i.e., those with whom they have the strongest ties) to others than they are by introducing mere acquaintances.

This research may help shed a light one of the social processes that sustain gender inequality.