This paper analyses the role of artistic brokerage in Barcelona, arguing for the importance of taking a gendered view. The artistic market is increasingly individualized and based on a monopoly of legitimate culture by mediators. Such figures are key producers of social capital in terms of providing job opportunities, artistic recognition and reputation building. Studies from the Spanish music market and artistic residencies show how artists strategically build social capital to receive commissions and recognition through networking. Moreover, previous studies reveal the existence of patterns of epistemic and symbolic injustice that shape the distribution of cultural and social capital among professional artists. We hypothesize that gender homophily of the artists’ personal networks reproduces objective forms of inequality in the job market. The glass ceiling and leaky pipeline ought to come with gaps in female powerful brokers in the network such as curators, gallery owners or funding commissioners. We look at the composition of 30 visual artists' personal networks within four different disciplines in Barcelona as part of video-aided ethnography research using a mixed methodology, by combining semi-structured interviews, observation, participatory photography and SNA. The results obtained from centrality and compositional measures with Egonet lead us to consider that gender homophily has a dual effect on artistic careers and reputations. While female contacts provide positive role models for artists, upscale recognition, visibility and legitimacy depends specifically on close access to female artistic brokers. Structural patterns of inequality shape the networks.

It takes a village to raise a child: women’s labour force participation is not just a function of their personal choices or economic conditions but also the strength and quality of the support systems that surround them. This study investigates the role of support networks in shaping the labour force participation of young mothers in urban India, focusing on the intricate dynamics between kin and non-kin support systems. Drawing on data from 193 women aged 25-35 with at least one child aged five or younger across the National Capital Region of India, the research combines bivariate and multivariate analyses with qualitative insights from 30 in-depth interviews.

The study hypothesizes that stronger and more diverse support networks enable higher workforce participation among women. We introduce a multidimensional framework to understand support, categorizing it into density, source, type, and intensity. Density refers to the number of support systems available, while source distinguishes between kin (e.g., family) and non-kin (e.g., domestic workers, community services). Type examines the kind of support provided, such as housework or childcare, and intensity reflects the frequency and depth of assistance.

Key findings reveal that higher support density correlates with increased workforce participation. Women with five or more support sources are nearly four times more likely to engage in paid work. Additionally, the type and intensity of support are pivotal. For instance, high-intensity housework support from domestic workers (OR=7.28) and childcare support from mothers-in-law (OR=6.02) significantly enhance labour participation. Conversely, limited support or adverse family dynamics, such as minimal spousal involvement or restrictive in-laws, create substantial barriers.

The qualitative narratives highlight the dual nature of support systems. Positive examples include women whose in-laws or domestic workers facilitate career continuity by assuming significant household responsibilities. However, other accounts underscore the constraints imposed by conservative family norms or unreliable external childcare. Women often express mistrust toward daycare facilities, emphasizing the necessity of dependable family support.

The findings underscore the critical role of comprehensive and reliable support networks in enabling young mothers to balance work and domestic duties. While joint families and domestic workers often provide this support, the study also identifies gaps where traditional norms or a lack of external resources hinder women's professional aspirations. These insights suggest the need for policy interventions to expand access to affordable domestic help and high-quality childcare while promoting equitable household responsibilities within families.

By shifting the focus beyond individual agency or household size, this research contributes to a nuanced understanding of how social structures influence women's labour force participation. It calls for a re-evaluation of support systems, emphasizing quality and functionality over mere availability, and advocates for inclusive strategies to dismantle systemic barriers faced by urban mothers. This study offers a comprehensive lens to understand the intersections of gender, labour, and support systems, laying the groundwork for future research and policy aimed at fostering gender equity in the workforce.

This research examines the role of female star inventors in the post-merger integration (PMI) of technology firms, focusing on the acquisition of ATI Technologies by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). While prior studies highlight gender disparities in technology industries, this study explores how female lead inventors impact social network structures and knowledge integration. Utilizing patent data from the USPTO, we reconstruct inventor collaboration networks and analyze the effects of relational stars—connectors and integrators—on group cohesion and knowledge exploration. Findings suggest that female connectors significantly enhance group cohesion by fostering collaborative ties, aligning with gender role expectations of communal and relational behaviors. On the other hand, both male and female integrators exhibit greater engagement in knowledge exploration, leveraging their network centrality to access diverse resources. Despite stereotypes limiting female participation in technology, our results indicate that female star inventors play a critical role in bridging knowledge silos and improving post-merger collaboration. These findings contribute to the literature on gender dynamics in innovation-driven M&As, emphasizing the influence of social-relational dynamics on firm knowledge dynamics.

Gender clearly informs women’s and men’s collaborative profiles and career activities, yet the research on these is conflicted. Some cases find parity, while others find women’s network positioning to be qualitatively different or cumulatively disadvantaging. Further, prior studies often focus on single disciplines or countries, and/or invoke cross-sectional snapshots, and large-scale analyses have been limited to less computationally-intensive network measures.

Using Scopus data (2009-2023), we construct global co-authorship networks for authors in 20 region-subject pairs across two periods (2009-2013; 2014-2018) and measures of downstream productivity and citations. We hypothesize that gender affects social capital, with women receiving differential benefits from network positioning on future activity. Our independent variables include measures of (normalized) brokerage and aggregate constraint, and their interaction with gender, as well as controls for gender homophily and interdisciplinarity, for region, subject, and publication experience.

We find that network benefits are contingent on gender, with variation across regions and subjects. Women’s future productivity benefits more than men’s when in network positions rich in brokerage opportunities, yet does not reach parity at any level of normalized brokerage. Yet for constraint, the largest predicted differences are between men and women who are least constrained. All else equal, the gender “discount” for women ranges between 5-7% (high brokerage, high constraint) and 14-18% (low constraint, low brokerage). Conversely, there is more equity in reward for brokerage and constraint on citation count (5% or less). We discuss these, as well as important nuances of considering gender disparity across time and globally.

Male violence causes enormous health, social, political and economic problems internationally. At an interpersonal level, efforts to reduce violence have recognised that narrowly defined views of masculinity contribute substantially to this problem. From the perspective that gender is socially constructed, relationships with others are exceptionally important and hence a social network perspective to this issue is highly applicable. This paper presents a theoretical framework and network metrics on what positively enacted masculinities (i.e., pro-gender equity and non-violence endorsing) might look like. We present such theory and metrics in relation to a case study of a boys-only secondary school in Australia to show how network structures, node-level attributes, and exogenous features may impact on enactments of masculinity. We propose a range of social mechanisms that we would expect to see if positively enacted masculinities were present in a school on a range of different types of networks and then use exponential random graph models (ERGMs) to test for their presence within our case study. We discuss the implications of our findings and the need for greater theorizing of social mechanisms relevant to positive and non-violent masculinities.