Ashish KothariMake flourishing your competitive edge

Is a "women-only" network quietly holding your career back?

14 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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Women are five times more likely than men to have networks made only of women, and those homogenous networks tend to be narrower and more junior. Only about 30% of direct reports to CEOs are women, suggesting that lacking male connections can block your path to senior roles.

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I think when we look at, you know, the network that women have, both the like weaker networks but also the like less likelihood or lower comfort in mixing professional and personal networks, we also see in the data that women are 5 times more likely to have only women in their network. And I thought at first maybe that's fine, right? Because I have some amazing women in my network and I was like, I could probably be just fine with only them. Here's why that doesn't work. Number 1, We looked, we were talking about earlier that talent pipeline, right? Only about 30% of people who report to the CEO are women. If there's only women in my network, by definition, my network is going to be more narrow and more junior in the organization than somebody like you who has a mix of women and men, but a more kind of diverse network.