Gender inequalities: the role of social networks in gendered interactions and social structures
Research summary
- The project investigates how social networks shape and sustain gender inequalities.
- It examines whether gender influences how people form, maintain, and dissolve social networks, and whether outcomes like status, power, and isolation differ.
- It also explores how gendered patterns vary across relationship types and contexts such as schools and organizations with differing gender cultures and policies.
Project overview
Gender inequality remains a global issue with social and economic costs, despite international goals like the UN 2030 Agenda.
Women, LGBT communities, and men in non-traditional roles all face unequal opportunities reinforced by gendered hierarchies embedded in social structures.
This project investigates how social networks produce and reproduce gender inequalities by linking everyday gendered interactions to broader structural disparities.
It aims to identify the social network mechanisms shaping these inequalities, addressing gaps in both gender and network studies.
Through analyses of personal, school, organizational, and illicit networks, it will assess how gender influences network formation, maintenance, and outcomes across different contexts.
The project
We have compiled a substantial collection of publicly available datasets that can be explored through the Gender Networks app.
This interactive tool enables users to visualise the positions that individuals of different genders occupy within various social networks.
These networks represent relationships among people within specific contexts, for example friendships among students in classrooms, advisory ties between employees in workplaces or co-offending relationships within illicit enterprises.
At present, the app includes social network data connecting students in educational settings, employees within organisations and individuals involved in criminal networks.
However, this list is expected to expand as the project develops.
The app is designed to be dynamic and sustainable, allowing new datasets to be added over time, ensuring that both the data repository and the app remain valuable research resources beyond the lifespan of the current funded project.
Researchers and data owners are invited to contribute to this growing resource.
If you have social network datasets that include information on individuals’ gender characteristics and would like to make them accessible through the Gender Networks app, please contact the research team.
Your contribution will help broaden the scope of comparative research on gendered patterns of social interaction across diverse social contexts.
Impact
As the project is in its initial stages, promotional activities have not yet begun.
However, the team has established strong outreach partnerships, notably with the School of Education and the Home - #BeeWell initiative, both of which have agreed to share the project’s webpage with their extensive network of UK schools. Together, they represent one of the project’s primary impact audiences.
Meet the team
- Elisa Bellotti, The University of Manchester, UK
- Tomas Diviak, The University of Manchester, UK
