Workplace Inequality through Network Referrals
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-human-networks-inequality-social-immobility.html
As the degree of interconnectedness of people increases, inequality of people excluded from those networks increases too. Ethnic minorities tend to fall on the outside of social networks, act as bridges less, and exist more in networks of people of their ethnicities (homophily). Overt discrimination in the past has led minority networks to lack the same access to resources, job positions, power, investors, and overall opportunities as their peers. The use of referrals takes away some of the objectivity of reviewing resumes and blinding. Even when connected by strong or weak ties, people may choose not to refer peers who are racial or ethnic minorities or women, further perpetuating male dominated fields and inequality overall. Peers may perceive minority workers as undesiring or incapable of success in certain types of jobs and decide not to refer them; though these effects likely are not as dominant as the simple lack of interaction between networks along racial/ethnic/gender lines.
In class we spoke about the strength of weak ties and the power given to people who connect different networks. As worldwide networks continue to grow, yet simultaneously homophily increases, structural denial of job opportunities will cause class disparities along racial and ethnic lines to intensify. In the ILR program we learn about the tendency of workers to have more initial success in their position when they receive the position through a personal referral. This has led to the use of statistical discrimination by employers who feel their preference for white male workers is based on objective statistics of propensity for success. Based on this article and information of graph theory as taught in class, it seems the only hope for solving this problem is to artificially induce ties (maybe through diversity conventions or affirmative action programs), which in the future would allow for more organic integration of minority workers into networks with access to opportunity.