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Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. . . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
—C. S. Lewis, author1
Allen is an ambitious entry-level employee at a prestigious consulting firm and an experienced long-distance runner. A senior manager in Allen’s firm, Joe, is training for his first marathon. Sharing an elevator one morning, Allen and Joe discover their common interest in running. Since Allen has been running competitively for many years, Joe is eager to hear more about his training strategies. Later that same day, Joe stops by Allen’s desk and invites Allen to join him for a beer after work to discuss running. Allen agrees and, while at the pub, Joe offers Allen a tip on how to deal with a difficult client which helps Allen gain a higher profile within the firm. A mentor relationship develops, and Joe continues to provide Allen with valuable advice and information. When a new job opportunity emerges, Joe is eager to recommend Allen.
Now imagine Anita is in the elevator that morning instead of Allen. Just like Allen, Anita is an ambitious entry-level employee and an experienced long-distance runner. Are Joe and Anita as likely to uncover their common interest in running during their morning elevator ride? Probably not, but let’s say they did. Is Joe as likely to ask Anita to join him for a beer after work? Again, probably not—he’d most likely feel awkward. What if Anita thinks he wants a date, or worse, what if she thinks it’s sexual harassment?
Let’s say Joe overcomes these concerns and invites Anita to join him for a beer after work to discuss training for the marathon. Unlike Allen, Anita is caught off guard, and her mind fills with questions. A beer? Is this a date? If I go, will I give him the wrong idea? Even if he does just want to discuss running, what will my coworkers think? That I’m sleeping my way to the top? And what will my boyfriend think? Anita nervously declines his invitation, providing some excuse as to why she’s busy. Anita never befriends Joe and never receives the career-boosting client tip. No mentor relationship blossoms for Anita.
When Allen met Joe for a beer after work, no eyebrows were raised and no questions were asked. But for Joe and Anita, the situation was much more complicated—almost not worth the effort. Situations comparable to this fictional anecdote play out in workplaces every day, and I believe they are a primary culprit in women’s lack of advancement at work.
In order to avoid any suggestion of workplace romance or sexual harassment, opposite-sex coworkers are shying away from nonessential interactions, creating a barrier between men and women at work. Friendships with the opposite sex can be tricky enough to manage outside of work, but within the workplace, additional constraints encourage workers to stick to same-sex colleagues. These barriers between the sexes that get in the way of developing cross-sex friendships make up what I call the sex partition.2
The sex partition limits your pool of potential friends, and limiting your friends also limits your career. The benefits of friendships at work extend far beyond having buddies at the water cooler. Friends at work provide one another with valuable information, and friends with more senior employees can evolve into mentor relationships. The research evidence is irrefutable: Those with more work friends earn more money, get promoted faster, have better job performance, are happier in their jobs, and have better health than those with fewer friends.3
Any way you look at it, those with less access to work friends are at a real disadvantage. While the sex partition limits the friendships of both men and women, it packs a much greater punch for female employees. Since senior management is still predominantly male,4 when it comes to befriending senior execs, women often have to seek out male friendships. Yet, one study reports that a shocking 64 percent of senior men were reluctant to have a one-on-one meeting with a junior woman at work.5 If junior women can’t get a meeting, they are not going to develop the working relationships with the senior executive men that are critical for career success.
What about men in female-dominated organizations? Wouldn’t they also face sex partition issues when they try to climb the ranks? Surprisingly, they don’t. Men in female-dominated workplaces are often said to be on a “glass escalator” to the top management levels.6 In other words, men’s advancement is actually accelerated in these organizations. Why would men have it easier when they’re surrounded by women? Despite the fact that there are more women than men in these workplaces, the senior-level management in these organizations is still often dominated by men. Junior-level men in these environments can buddy up to the boss, and it pays off. Take, for example, secretaries—96 percent of whom are women. Despite their dominance of the profession, female secretaries earn only 86 percent as much as male secretaries.7 Male secretaries have an easier time than female secretaries bonding with predominantly male management, and it shows in their paycheck.
So essential are workplace friendships to career success, I contend the sex partition is the primary impediment preventing gender equity in the workplace. Statistics reveal that women’s careers are still lagging well behind those of their male counterparts. Despite the fact that women are obtaining more bachelor’s degrees and graduate degrees than men, women in the United States still earn only seventy-seven cents on the dollar compared to men and have meager representation in the top levels of corporations. In the Fortune 500, women hold only 14.6 percent of executive-officer positions,8 8.1 percent of the top earner positions,9 and only 4.6 percent of the Fortune 500 companies are run by female CEOs.10 Within the law profession, women are overrepresented at the lowest positions such as staff attorney (64 percent women), but only 17 percent of the highly paid equity partners are women.11 Women in the United States government don’t fare so well either. There are only seven women presently holding state governor positions, women make up a mere 18 percent of the 113th Congress,12 and we have yet to elect a female president.
Why Are Work Friendships So Valuable?
I’m certainly not the first to suggest that women are held back by difficulties networking. The novelty of the sex partition lies in why women have so much difficulty establishing networks with men. But, before we get into the why, I want to make sure you understand just how critical friendships at work can be to your career.
Whether helping you fix a printer jam, writing a portion of your overdue brief, or just bringing you coffee on a late night, in my study of friendships at work, I was told friends at work “look out for you.” Professionals reported learning from their friends at work and feeling more comfortable asking them questions. Mike, an urban planner, expressed how his friends at work help him “gather information, not just about how the company works, but who is doing what to whom and when, and what the real story was.”13
Information we get from our friend network is not only valuable in itself, but it also provides power to the recipient. One of my coworkers, John, knew everything that was happening at work. If you wanted information you went to John. This gave John power, because he could decide what information he wanted to share, and how he wanted to spin that information. The information that we receive from our friends instills us with power, because it provides us with the ability to make good decisions and influence others. In fact, friendships can translate into power merely because those with friends are perceived to be well connected. In other words, having more friends at work gives an employee higher status that results in what is often termed referent power, or power gained from having the respect of others.14
This information, help with our jobs, and the listening ears we get from our friends at work also give us a feeling of social support, and the benefits associated with social support at work are overwhelming. Studies reveal traffic enforcement agents who received more social support issued more summonses, booksellers with social support sold more books, and auto parts manufacturers with support from coworkers worked more creatively.15 As if that’s not enough, those with more social support from coworkers have better health and are happier in their jobs.16 Just one day with less support at work can result in a decline in your job performance.17
Information and social support are valuable, but perhaps the greatest career boost our friends can give us is assistance landing a new job offer. With the exception of my Howard Johnson’s waitressing job, I have not obtained a job without the help of my contacts. From my much-coveted Vassar College campus job score-keeping for intramural sports to my Wall Street trading job, it was all about who I knew. I worked hard, so the people I knew felt comfortable recommending me, but I doubt I could have landed my jobs by blindly sending résumés or answering ads.
Recently, studies have confirmed what many have long known, that getting the good job depends on who you know.18 Studies of workplace promotions consistently indicate that advancement most often results from tapping the right contacts.19 Not surprisingly, those who are personally referred for a particular job are more likely to land the job than those who apply without a referral.20
Obtaining job offers isn’t only useful for those interested in moving on. You want to negotiate a raise? Acquiring outside offers can be one of the most effective methods of negotiating a pay increase with your current employer. Having an outside job offer under your belt gives you leverage. You’re not just asking for a raise, but you’re providing evidence of your worth. Researchers speculate that one reason women find themselves at the bottom of the pay scale is that they’re less likely to network for outside job offers.21 Acquiring information about outside job openings requires a substantial friendship network, and, if women have more difficulty developing these relationships, they just won’t receive the offers.
Acquaintances Are Valuable, Too
Although one of my best friends in college got me the score-keeping gig, most of my other jobs came from connections who weren’t in my circle of closest friends. When it comes to work, acquaintances (sometimes referred to as “weak ties”) can often be more valuable than close friends or relatives (or “strong ties”).22 Why are weak ties so valuable? Close friends tend to link you to other people who are similar to yourself, therefore, your strong ties typically have the same knowledge and contacts that you already have. Weak ties are more likely to offer connections to people you don’t already know. Often weak ties are of higher prestige than strong ties, and therefore weak ties can lead to other higher-status contacts or better job offers.23 Ultimately, job seekers who are referred by weak ties are more likely to attain higher-prestige positions than those who are referred by strong ties.
Don’t write off your close friends just yet. Although the information obtained from weak ties is important, the information from more established friends is valuable, too. Closer friends tend to share more sensitive information and are more honest with one another.24 In fact, the information received from closer friends tends to be more timely, more accurate, and of higher quality than information obtained from those who shared a less intimate friendship. Workers benefit, therefore, from both their close friends and their acquaintances.
More Men in Your Network=More Money in Your Paycheck
Clearly, friends in your network are important, but it turns out some friends are more beneficial than others. Several studies reveal that the number of men in your network may have more of an influence on your paycheck than the number of women in your network.25
One revealing study illustrates how leveraging contacts with men in your network can impact your paycheck. The researchers began by counting the number of influential people that executives had encountered in their careers.26 These were not necessarily friends or even acquaintances, just influential people that the individuals worked alongside sometime in their past. For male executives, overlapping with more influential contacts throughout their careers resulted in higher salaries. For female executives, no such relationship was found. The female executives’ salaries were not related to the number of influential contacts they had encountered in their career. In other words, the male executives were able to leverage their contacts into higher pay, while the women were not. It’s important to note, it was not the availability of influential contacts that differed—the women had typically worked alongside more influential people than men did. Instead, it was the ability to initiate relationships with these people, and then utilize these relationships, which ultimately resulted in greater remuneration. Ultimately, men were able to utilize their contacts better than women in the study.
What might explain this gender discrepancy in utilizing contacts? It may help to know that the influential contacts in this study were predominantly male. Therefore, the women had to forge primarily cross-sex friendships in order to leverage these contacts, while men simply needed to befriend other men. I believe difficulties establishing cross-sex friendships, the sex partition, was responsible for holding these women back.
It turns out the executive women in this study earned 17 percent less than their male counterparts. How much of this gender difference in pay was attributable to the gender difference in the ability to leverage contacts? All of it. The authors in the study assert that the ability to leverage contacts statistically accounted for the entire gender gap in pay for these executives.
It shouldn’t shock you that male friends can offer more benefits than female friends. Look at the stats; men are still running most organizations. If you want friends in high places, a good portion of them will probably need to be men. Men also have connections to other men in high places. Connecting to men in middle management can link you to their connections to senior management.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not suggesting that female friends aren’t valuable at work. I’ve had many that were incredibly valuable to my career. I’m saying that women generally have more difficulty befriending men, and since men still run most of our organizations, this is a real problem.
Now that we understand the value of friendship and networking, the goal of the remainder of this book is to examine why women have so much trouble establishing friendships with male colleagues. The reasons aren’t the typical excuses—that women are too busy with childcare or not adequately assertive—though these issues may play a role. From sexual harassment training and fear of sexual harassment charges to awkward situations on business trips and unrequited romantic interest, a whole slew of issues are creating barriers between men and women at work.
These issues don’t only impact women who want to be at the helm of large corporations. Stories in this book reveal how the sex partition impacts the careers of supermarket employees, dental hygienists, and university students as well as lawyers and corporate employees. If you’re a woman and you work with men, most likely the sex partition is impacting you as well. There are no easy fixes, but I’ll help you navigate around the sex partition at your workplace.
Until now, few have addressed these issues head on. Perhaps no one thought we could remedy them. Or perhaps fear of risking the progress we’ve made in reducing sexual harassment in the workplace has left organizations afraid to encourage interactions between men and women. However, given the barrier these issues are creating for women’s careers, we have no alternative but to start discussing these problems. Silence certainly isn’t going to make them disappear.
It’s also important to note that the sex partition isn’t anyone’s fault. Men are not to blame and women are not to blame. Some organizational practices exacerbate the problem, but organizations aren’t all to blame either. However, there are steps we can all take to break down the sex partition, and the final six chapters of this book focus squarely on workable solutions to this problem. Although accompanied by anecdotes, the description of the sex partition and the proposed remedies are solidly based on my own studies in combination with the latest research from psychology, sociology, organizational behavior, and management.