Check out this cool survey by ExecuNet:

Do you network like a girl? If so, you have the advantage. In our gender analysis of data from our 15th annual Executive Job Market Intelligence Report, women assessed their networks more positively than their male counterparts, giving themselves much higher “excellent” ratings.

Source: ExecuNet, 2007

Dave Opton, CEO and founder of ExecuNet, offered a couple of non-scientific reasons for the divide. “Two-thirds more women than men said they worked on building their professional networking relationships ‘very often;’ and self-assessment is subjective and without universal measurement.”

Despite their super networking skills, women are still less visible in the corporate executive suite than are men, and a 2004 study in the American Journal of Business outlined some of the influential factors.

“Female executives do not achieve top ranked executive positions at the same frequency as do male executives. However, top female executives are significantly younger, and have fewer years of service with the company and in their job positions, than their male counterparts. This may be indicative of the movement to encourage and support women to achieve higher corporate positions, but it could also provide a reasonable explanation for the observed compensation gender gap,” write Joanne Healy Burress and Linda J. Zucca in the report.

ExecuNet’s proprietary research produced encouraging news: while the title and compensation gap exists, the differential was roughly just $20,000, and both genders expected about the same increase in wages from 2006 to 2007 — 7 percent.

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Now all we need is more cash, right girls?

In Forbes May 2007 issue, author Barbara Ehrenreich writes about networking:

Why do people resist the idea of networking?

Most people encounter the notion of networking through the crisis of unemployment. Suddenly a layoff, downsizing or re-org leaves you without income, health insurance or a postbreakfast destination. What to do? “There are four ways to find a job,” an ExecuNet functionary told a group of white-collar job seekers I had joined in 2004 as an undercover journalist–“networking, networking, networking and networking.” My own career coach, whom I was paying $200 an hour to propel me into employment, advised networking with every single human I could buttonhole, even for a second: the person seated next to me on a plane, my doctor, my doctor’s receptionist.

It should be fun, right?  Read on!

While I enjoyed her excellent and well-researched article, I have to disagree that networking always stinks and is never fun. I do agree, however, her committment to “networking from the heart.” YES. Givers gain. Check out how marketing coach Ronnie Noize and I turn things around and keep ’em positive in our teleclass, Seven Secrets of Networking, Thursday, May 31.

And for more fun, yes I said fun, about networking, check out the MP3 of Rock Your Network (R).