Constrained brokerage: gendered returns to network position in GCC higher education

Gender inequality in academic collaboration remains a persistent challenge in higher education, yet existing research offers limited explanation of how network structures reproduce unequal access to visibility, resources, and recognition. This study examines gendered collaboration patterns in an entrepreneurship and innovation co-authorship network anchored in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) higher education, combining bibliometric corpus construction (4,613 publications, 14,250 authors, 2014 –2024) with social network analysis and statistical testing. The findings reveal a consistent structural pattern. Women are under-represented in the broader top tier of academic collaboration across all four centrality measures, with the largest gap in brokerage positions (top 5% of betweenness: 15.7%, against a 24.4% baseline). At the very top of the network, women appear at approximately the baseline rate. A rank-based test of the brokerage-prestige relationship reveals that the correlation between brokerage and prestige is significantly weaker for women than for men (Spearman ρ = 0.32 vs 0.45; Fisher’s z = −5.01, p < .0001). We interpret this dual pattern of restricted access and weaker broker-prestige coupling through the concept of constrained brokerage, with mediated weak ties introduced as an interpretive hypothesis about tie formation under institutional and interactional constraint. The study advances research in higher education by shifting the analytical focus from participation gaps to the relational organisation of academic work, demonstrating how collaboration networks reproduce stratification even in rapidly developing research systems. The findings carry implications for policy aligned with SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 4 (Quality Education).