Why is it
hard for women to become brokers? To begin with, it is hard for anyone because
it requires reaching beyond the immediate work group. It is also hard because
people are suspicious of brokers and may be reluctant to share information with
them. In fact, the most effective brokers are those who are not known to be brokers. For women, these suspicions are especially strong because of the
gendered belief that women maintain closer relations with proximate friends and
coworkers. As a result, they gain less access to brokerage and less benefit
from brokerage.
Changing
jobs has many of the same disadvantages, even if the job change is just a
reassignment ordered by the employer. But here is the interesting part: when
women move, the brokerage disadvantages disappear. Both disadvantages. Women
who move gain brokerage positions just as easily as men who move, and women who
move obtain the same performance benefits as men who move. This is a new discovery from a paper by Evelyn Zhang, Brandy Aven, and Adam Kleinbaum published in Administrative Science Quarterly. Their idea, which turned out to
be true, is that moving gives “license to broker” because network ties in the
new workplace are necessary, and maintaining contacts with the prior workplace is
expected – especially for women, who are supposed to be more stable network
partners than men (again a gendered belief). So in this case two wrongs make a
right.
Interesting?
Let us not see this as encouraging information though. Even when workers
benefit from gendered beliefs like this, the beliefs still create a warped
workplace where opportunities and rewards are unfairly distributed.
