Gender and social network brokerage: A meta-analysis and field investigation.

= 150 and 245, respectively), examined both structural opportunity (job-based opportunity and workplace discrimination) and individual agency (proactive networking) as potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between gender and network brokerage. Results of these 2 samples consistently show that proactive networking mediated gender's effect on network brokerage that was measured 6 months after the new employees entered their organizations. The predictions regarding the mediation effects of job-based opportunity and workplace discrimination were not supported. Our findings offer valuable insights into the relative positions of women and men in informal structures of organizational networks, advance our understanding of gender inequality in career outcomes, and shed new light on the relative importance of individual agency and structural opportunity in explaining individuals' occupancy of advantageous network positions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).