Gender and Networks

The Industrial Revolution: In the Public Sphere

The Industrial Revolution had a consequence of enforcing a strict disconnection between the domestic, reproductive, and private sphere and the economically productive work and public sphere, with women largely confined to the domestic zone as wife and mother. Even so, women utilized technology for more communicative purposes to connect with their social networks, as was found in Claude Fischer's sociological research on the usage of the residential telephone during the half-century before World War II in North America. Gender stratification lessened after women earned the formal rights to education and suffrage, and in the decades following World War II, women were able to gain employment opportunities outside the home. The door was now opened for women to forge workplace social networks, extending their relationships beyond those of kin-centered and neighbor-centered relationships.

Research in the 20th century on the formation of social networks within organizational contexts suggested that gender homophily operated to the disadvantage of females who lacked mentoring and career support at the top of the career ladder. Women continued to suffer from the disadvantages of structural factors, which necessitated their withdrawal from the workforce after marriage and/or childbearing. Within the workplace, and in accordance with M. McPhearson, L. Smith-Lovin, and J. M. Cook's articulation of the homophily concept, men tended to forge social networks with other men due to their higher social status within the organizational hierarchy. Women, often stuck at the lower rung of the organization, had to vary their social networks, gaining emotional support from women and instrumental support from men. Women's “third [Page 315]shift,” defined as home responsibilities after returning from the job, meant that they held fewer connections to voluntary organizations or weak ties due to the gendering of leisure time. Because of their association with the public sphere and their higher occupational status, men were able to reap the rewards of networking along gender-homophilous lines, both within and outside the workplace setting.

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