Research co-authored by Lecturer in Mathematical Modelling Dr Maria Oskarsdottir together with colleagues at Western University in Canada has shed light on how professional networks contribute to persistent gender disparities in corporate leadership.

Researchers analysed publicly available data on the corporate leadership of 772 publicly traded Canadian firms that encompassed more than 19,000 corporate employees and spanned the period from 2000 to 2022.

Published in the journal Patterns their results show that educational, employment, and social networks matter for both men and women, but women rely on more complex social networks to reach director-level positions than men. Women with professional ties to other female leaders were also more likely to be promoted.

The team found that out of 15,167 men and 4,228 women, 17% of men and 19.4% of women eventually secured director positions. There was a gradual increase in the number of women granted first-time board appointments, reflecting initiatives that began in 2015 to promote gender diversity on corporate boards in Canada.

When they compared the contribution of different networks for men and women with similar demographics and educational and professional experience, the researchers found notable differences between genders.

The likelihood that a man attained a director-level position was mostly determined by his current employment, whereas past employment and current and past social networks weighed more heavily on women’s success.

The research leaders have noted that understanding how people get to high-level positions can help design effective interventions to support people across their careers, either at a policy level or through internal corporate governance.

Despite incremental improvements in the past decade, women remain underrepresented in corporate boardrooms. Though networks are undoubtedly vital for career advancement, it’s not clear which networks are most influential, or whether certain networks are helping or hindering initiatives to improve gender disparity, say the researchers.

Dr Óskarsdóttir explained: “The women who are making it to the top have to be excellent at everything.

“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.”

To see how individuals assist the advancement of others in their network, the researchers also investigated the number and quality of connections for each existing board member. This analysis revealed that women who advanced to high-level positions were more likely to be well-connected to other female leaders.

The findings show how invisible social processes affect hiring decisions, the researchers say—information which they hope will help in designing interventions to achieve better gender representation in leadership.

“We have similar patterns in academia, so these insights and methods also could be generalized to other fields with gender inequality,” added Dr Óskarsdóttir.

Dr Óskarsdóttir’s research is focused on the intersection of network science and machine learning, looking at practical applications of data science and analytics to leverage advanced machine learning techniques, network science, and various sources of data with the goal of increasing the impact of the analytics process and facilitating better usage of data science for decision making in domains such as finance, learning, marketing, health care and sustainability. She has over 50 publications in high-impact journals and conferences in the fields of operations research, network science and information systems. She serves as editor at Machine Learning and the International Journal of Forecasting. She is a co- author of the book ‘Deep Learning in Banking’ (2026).

Share this article on social media: