Call: "Gender and Networks"

Organizer: Elisa Bellotti (Mitchell Centre for SNA, University of Manchester)

Session Description: Social network research studies the mechanisms that drive formations of network structures as well as the outcomes of such structures on social behaviour. A well investigated area of research focuses on gender differences in network formations and outcomes in personal and professional networks. Researchers have looked, for example, at the different styles of socializations of boys and girls in early age, varieties of gendered network structures in different cultures, gender differences in peer networks and educational outcomes, gendered structural and cultural constrains of network strategies in organizational studies, different network positions and relational strategies between men and women at work, gender unbalance in academic networks and interlocking directorates.

This session wants to bring together interdisciplinary perspectives on gender similarities and differences in social networks which might be investigated with a variety of methods and modelling techniques. We welcome both highly quantitative modelling studies as well as qualitative research that looks at how discourses and narratives may impact the relational strategies embedded in network structures. We also welcome research that expand the very definition of gender to investigate peculiarities and differences of LGBT social networks.

Topics of the session might include, but are not limited to:

• Gender differences in structure and composition of personal networks

• Gender differences in tie formation in early life

• Gender dynamics in educational settings

• Gender and social support over the lifetime

• Gender, social capital and brokerage

• Gender differences in interlocking directorates, academic networks and organizational studies

• Gendered narratives in relational strategies

• Gendered perceptions of SNA