Early Career Women in Academia: An Exploration of Networking Perceptions

This chapter explores women’s networking perceptions by focusing on early career women in social sciences. Within an exploratory research design it asks how early career women define the early career stage in academia, what definitions, meanings and interpretations they give for networks and networking, how they construct the networking process and their ability to establish and/or join networks, as early career researchers and as women. Based on two group interviews with 12 participants, our findings show that early career women in academia favour networking with peers based on shared interests (organic networking). At the same time though, they challenge and step over the perceived gender…