The role of social networks in enhancing women's career advancement: The case of women employees in International Non-Governmental Organizations in Ethiopia
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Date
2014-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
De;pite the evident importance of social capital in enhancing human capacity, research on its
gender dimension especially in promoting women 's access and benefit fi'om such capital is
virtually non-existent. If done at ali, it tends to focus on its economic benefit of the entire
community or socielies, but rarely on gender fi'om social capital perspective or its role as
critical adjunct to women 's career development
Among several social capital indicators, social networking is the basic indicator of social capital
formalion. Thus, Ihis paper deals with social networking in relation to women's career
advancemenl and hence assesses how social network impacts in eilher jclcilitating or
constraining structural opportuni/ies for women's career advancements.
In order to obtain data for the study through a mixed of research methods (quantitative and
qualilative) 63 women and 39 men working for international nongovernmental organization
were approached Besides, various documenls were reviewed 10 supplement data collected ji'om
primwy sources and finally analyzed both qualitatively using narration and quanlitatively using
fi'equency and percenlage.
The analysis reveals Ihat gender plays a crucial role in the kinds of social capilalformalion. As
a result, the types of social capital women and men lend to form is different in that women often
tend 10 form bonding of social capital whereas men tend to form objective or bridging social
capital. This enables men to get non redundant and high level information Ihan women. .
In summary, inlhe workplace women rely more onformal networking and a/lach less valuefor
workplace informal networking. And gender role socialization, gender stereotype and
institutional systems are the major contributing jclctors for women's less participation in
different social networking both al community and workplaces. Accordingly, the findings of this
paper confirm that women have less networking experiences which ajJecls their career
advancements.
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role of social networks