WEQUALITY · Professional social media platforms and women’s career advancement: factors impacting women’s career equality without backlash. A management research perspective

Professional social media platforms and women’s career advancement: factors impacting women’s career equality without backlash. A management research perspective

The WEQUALITY project pursues three core scientific objectives aimed at understanding and advancing gender equality in the digital professional sphere. First, it seeks to develop new theory and metrics to assess whether the most widely used professional social media platform in Europe — with over 160 million users — enhances women's career equality by expanding their opportunities for self-promotion and networking (“pushed out” perspective). Second, it aims to determine whether such platforms actually help mitigate gender differences in these behaviors, offering an alternative to traditional workplace exclusion (“opting out” perspective). Third, the project investigates which interventions — by women themselves and by key stakeholders such as mentors, leaders, and coworkers — support or hinder women’s effective use of these platforms, and under what conditions such interventions contribute to meaningful progress toward gender equality. As the world of work becomes increasingly digital, the tools we use to build careers are changing. Online professional networks like LinkedIn now play a central role in shaping how people connect, promote themselves, and access new opportunities. Yet, despite this technological shift, gender gaps in career advancement persist. The EU-funded WEQUALITY project set out to explore a critical question: Can professional social media platforms help close the gender gap in career progression, or are they simply replicating offline inequalities in digital spaces? Launched under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01), WEQUALITY investigates how professional platforms impact the way women self-promote and network — two key behaviors that are essential for career success but often socially penalized when performed by women. Drawing from management, psychology, information systems, and communication studies, the project explores both the opportunities and risks that digital platforms create for women’s equality in the workplace. Context and overall objectives: The WEQUALITY project was developed in response to a growing challenge at the intersection of gender equality and the digital transformation of work: how can professional social media platforms — like LinkedIn — be leveraged to promote women's career advancement without reproducing the very biases that have historically held them back? Strategic and Political Context: Across the European Union, closing gender gaps in career advancement remains a top strategic priority. Despite progress, women continue to face underrepresentation in leadership roles, lower access to high-impact networks, and fewer opportunities for career mobility. This inequality was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which accelerated the shift to virtual work but also reinforced gendered dynamics around caregiving, visibility, and professional engagement. At the same time, the EU’s Horizon Europe program and European Research Area (ERA) emphasize gender equality as both a scientific necessity and a driver of innovation and competitiveness. There is increasing recognition that addressing complex societal challenges — such as economic inclusion, labor market participation, and leadership diversity — requires not only policy interventions but also robust, evidence-based research. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) are specifically designed to support this kind of high-impact, interdisciplinary investigation. The Growing Importance of Online Social Networks in the Workplace Professional online social networks (OSNs) — most notably LinkedIn — are now central infrastructures of modern career development. With over 1 billion users globally, and more than 304 million in Europe, LinkedIn is widely used across sectors for job searches, talent recruitment, knowledge sharing, and professional branding. In many industries, particularly in tech, consulting, and academia, LinkedIn profiles have become de facto CVs, and activities on the platform are routinely used to assess credibility, influence, and leadership potential. Yet, while these platforms are theoretically democratizing — giving users the power to control how they present themselves and who they connect with — we still know very little about whether they truly reduce structural barriers, or if they reinforce existing gendered dynamics under a digital veneer. For instance, is self-promotion online evaluated differently depending on gender? Are women who reach out for mentorship on LinkedIn as likely to receive responses as their male peers? These are not just theoretical questions: they have direct implications for access to opportunity, visibility, and leadership pipelines in a digital-first world. Given how pervasive and influential OSNs have become in shaping career trajectories, the absence of clear, evidence-based answers to these questions represents a major knowledge gap — one that WEQUALITY is uniquely positioned to address.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union