Guest post by Clara Shih,
Author of The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff (Prentice Hall Professional), a new book about how social networking is transforming business practices and career development.
"As I wrote about in a recent blog post, women constitute a small majority of social networking members despite representing a minority percentage of internet users overall. 
In fact, the fastest growing audience demographic on Facebook over the last six months are women over the age of 55.For whatever reason, social networking sites seem to have greater appeal to how women prefer to interact.
Social networking sites are valuable professional tools for everyone regardless of gender but may play a particularly important role for helping women advance in their careers and achieve parity with male counterparts.
1. Virtual presence and others' mindshare.
Studies have shown that mothers who choose to work shorter hours in the office or take extended leave for childbirth or child-rearing suffer in their careers. This is true even in office environments where there are clearly established company policies that support these practices; where women have traditionally lost out has been in the informal networking that occurs in the office and mindshare of their colleagues and managers. Less face time in the office used to mean women might be perceived as contributing less. By providing an engaging, real-time way to post ideas, opinions, and activity updates virtually, social networking sites like Facebook provide an ideal forum for women to establish a strong presence virtually and win others' mindshare even when they are working from home.
2. Flat, nonhierarchical organization model
Studies, such as those conducted at Rutgers University using archaeological evidence, MRI brain scans, genetics and large-scale surveys of how men and women behave, show clear differences in organizational behavior between men and women. Women prefer flat structures. Men tend to prefer status and ranked hiearchies. Connections on social networking sites are directly one-to-one. As a result, online networks are flat -- unlike the hierarchy typical of most offline organizations -- and may be better suited to most women's strengths and preference.
3. Support for weak ties
Career advancement is strongly linked to the strength and breadth of one's networks -- such as who you can call on for favors, who is vouching for you when you're not there. Modern research in social capital theory describes two types of network structure: entrepreneurial networks and clique networks. Entrepreneurial networks have many weak ties. Clique networks have relatively few intimate ties. As you might expect, men tend to have entrepreneurial networks and women tend to feel more comfortable with clique networks. As it turns out, social capital and organizational power are maximized with entrepreneurial networks because they provide the individual with valuable alliances across the company in different departments and factions."
"Couple this fact with such factors as gender differences in height, voice, and socialized behavior which have been proven to favor males in the workplace and it's no wonder why men often end up dominating the positions of power in companies. With online social networks, women have an opportunity to catch up. Sites like Facebook and Linkedin are ideal tools for helping people maintain weak ties and therefore cultivate stronger entrepreneurial networks."
To learn more about how Facebook's effect on virtual presence and participation, organizational behavior, and social capital, check out The Facebook Era.
Clara's book, The Facebook Era, comes out this week in bookstores across the country. Clara blogs at thefacebookera.com and Twitters as clarashih.
