Network Logic - Index of

Network logic
A brief history of women’s networks
Women in Britain have associated in various ways for many centuries,
often forming strong personal ties through the relationships that
characterise women’s traditional, domestically oriented roles. These
sorts of relationships between women still exist today to varying
degrees. However, what is analytically distinctive about the peer-topeer
networking activities described in this essay is the way in which
they give a formal expression and visibility to previously informal and
loosely organised relationships, and focus them around a gendered
professional identity. Women’s networks thus can complicate
professional identities by constructing alternative narratives of and
generating new perspectives about organisations. In doing so, they
represent a force for organisational change and a form of social
agency with the potential to tackle persistent workplace inequalities
between women and men.
Communities of professional women began to grow at the end of
the nineteenth century when various membership associations and
institutions were founded for the rising number of women entering
Britain’s universities and professions. However, it was not until the
1970s, the period in which sexual politics were put firmly back on the
political agenda by the Women’s Liberation Movement, that the
dynamic peer-to-peer networking model recognisable among
professional women today began to take shape. Small groups of
businesswomen began to meet together in cities in the UK and the
US, initially through low-key gatherings for breakfast or lunch. These
grew rapidly into large corporate networks based within companies,
or external business networks with a nationwide reach. 2
These early networks set the trend for those that followed. The
activities ranged from purely social gatherings to workshops,
seminars, mentoring programmes and opportunities for voluntary
work, supplemented with access to general advice, information and
mutual support through the network. This model was adopted in the
UK by women in professions beyond the business world steadily
throughout the 1980s. However, over the last five to ten years, Britain
has witnessed what might be understood as a ‘new wave’ of the
118 Demos