Women aspiring to director-level roles in corporate Canada must build more intricate and diverse professional and social networks than men, according to new research analysing two decades of data.
The study, published on 12 March in the Cell Press journal Patterns, examined 19,395 senior employees across 772 publicly traded Canadian firms between 2000 and 2022. Researchers analysed work histories, educational backgrounds, and social engagements such as memberships in clubs, organisations, and charities.
Using an AI deep learning model, the team retrospectively mapped how individuals’ networks developed over time and identified factors associated with promotion to corporate board positions.
The dataset included 15,167 men and 4,228 women. Among them, 17% of men and 19.4% of women eventually secured director roles. The researchers noted that the dataset used only binary gender descriptions.
Appointments of women to boards increased gradually over the period studied. The researchers link this rise to gender-diversity initiatives that gained momentum in Canada after 2015.
Despite this progress, women remain underrepresented in corporate boardrooms. The study found that professional networks influence advancement for both genders, but the factors linked to promotion differ.
For men, the likelihood of reaching a director position was most strongly associated with their current employer. For women with similar education, experience, and demographics, past employment as well as both current and past social networks played a larger role.
Women who had professional ties to other female leaders were also more likely to advance.
“The women who are making it to the top have to be excellent at everything,” says coauthor María Óskarsdóttir of the University of Southampton. “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.”
The analysis also examined how board members support others in their networks. Women who reached director roles tended to maintain strong connections with other female leaders.
“Women that have been promoted to directors have been helping bring other women up,” says senior author Cristián Bravo of Western University. “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.”
First author Yuhao (Jet) Zhou, also from Western University, said the research aimed to better understand how senior roles are filled.
“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.”
Bravo said understanding these patterns could help organisations design policies that support career advancement earlier.
“Understanding how people get to these high level positions can help us design effective interventions to support people across their careers, either at a policy level or through internal corporate governance. We need to support people from the very beginning. We can’t just start when they’re already senior managers.”
The researchers argue that informal social networks strongly influence hiring decisions at senior levels and shape leadership opportunities.
The patterns may also apply outside corporate settings.
“We have similar patterns in academia, so these insights and methods also could be generalized to other fields with gender inequality,” Óskarsdóttir says.
The authors say the findings highlight the structural barriers that remain even as diversity policies expand. Understanding how networks influence promotions could help organisations develop strategies to improve gender representation in leadership.