men in leadership positions. A 1997 survey of executives found that 63 percent of men use networking to find new jobs compared 41 percent of women. Thirty-one percent of the women use classified advertisements to find jobs, compared to only 13 percent of the men (Carey and McLean 1997). Still, as we see in Box 5-2, women at all levels of the paid labor force are beginning to make effective use of social networks. A study of women who were leaving the welfare rolls to enter the paid workforce found that networking was an effective tool in their search for employment. Informal networking also helped them to locate child care and better housing-both of which are key to successful employment (Henly 1999)
In a recent study networks among middleaged managers at four Fortune 500 firms, Herminia Ibarra (1995) of the Harvard Business School noted the impact of