Gendered collaboration networks and their consequences on conflicts between academics

Abstract

As a major site of knowledge production, academia depends heavily on the quality of interactions among coworkers in collaboration. Negative ties, such as conflicts or avoidance between researchers, can impede the progress of research projects, and adversely affect individual career advancement. Our study reveals that these negative relations are not “gender-neutral” in the academic sector; they are experienced substantially more often by women. Using a large survey of early-career researchers in Hungary linked to administrative scientometric records, we model the number of conflict ties as a function of network position, gender, and field-level diversity. Among women, brokerage in co-authorship networks is associated with more conflicts, whereas embeddedness in cohesive collaboration groups is associated with fewer. These associations are not observed for men, whose conflict ties are more strongly related to publication-related success. Women also report fewer conflicts in fields where women are better represented, although evidence that field diversity moderates the brokerage-conflict relationship is limited. The findings show that collaboration-network advantages are not socially neutral in academia: brokerage may provide professional benefits, but it appears to entail higher interpersonal costs for women.