How STEM women achieve objective career success through networking: a competence signal perspective

Purpose Integrating signaling theory and networking literature, this article theorizes how science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) women may overcome barriers resulting from low-competence gender stereotypes to realize career achievements. Design/methodology/approach The article develops a conceptual model delineating the process through which STEM women achieve objective career success by strategic networking according to how they evaluate their competence signal strength. Findings When STEM women evaluate their competence signal strength to be weak (strong), they engage in more network-deepening (network-broadening) actions. This signal-based strategic networking tends to occur when STEM women experience an internal locus of control at work. Network-deepening strategies enhance STEM women’s performance when their networking contacts’ knowledge is deep or broad. Network-broadening strategies enhance STEM women’s performance when their networking contacts have an egalitarian gender-role attitude. Contexts with organizational merit-based reward practices further help translate STEM women’s high performance, resulting from signal-based strategic networking into objective career success. Originality/value Our conceptual framing elaborates how signal-based strategic networking helps STEM women overcome structural barriers to achieve career success. Our theorizing provides a holistic three-stage view of signaling by unpacking how signalers, signal attributes, receivers and environmental factors jointly shape the occurrence and effectiveness of signaling actions.