Women’s networking in Spanish academia: a ‘catch-all’ strategy or strategic sisterhood?

ABSTRACT The relevance of networking in academia and the gendered dynamics involved are well established in the literature. The persistence of the old-boy network pushes academic women to rationalize whether or not to ‘play the game’ and under what terms. Inspired by Feminist Institutionalism, this article explores the schemas of interpretation which academic women rely on to find meaning and to guide day-to-day relational dynamics. Drawing on 40 in-depth interviews with women from different age-groups and disciplines, three distinct approaches to networking are revealed in Spanish academia: rejection, collaboration and strategic sisterhood. Rejection refers to the detachment from all network dynamics, collaboration to the ‘catch-all’ (though not exclusively) cross-gender network connections, and strategic sisterhood to an in-built women-only support system. The inbreeding university logic, crucial to understanding Spanish idiosyncrasies, emerges as a transversal dimension to further our understanding of how the institutional context influences women´s strategic choices. The operationalization of academic merits and perceptions about the old-boys dynamics and female solidarity mark different ways of experiencing networking, while gender inequalities (partly) unify women’s discourses. Controversies are raised about collaborative strategies, and particularly women-only networks, in helping women evolve as agents of change in academia.