Women's Challenges to Enter into Male Networks in Academic Environments

Networking and entering into official and unofficial networks is the main way for individuals to get promoted in organizations. So entering into academic networks at universities has become a challenge for people who would like to promote their academic position. In Iran despite a notable increase in the women’s presence in universities, their entrance into academic networks and promoting their position as an academic member has remained to be a problem. Applying a qualitative method and the Ground Theory, the present research tries to study the challenges ahead of women to enter male academic networks at universities. 18 professors have been selected through purposive sampling and snow ball method. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and Strauss & Corbin’s constant comparative method. The research findings suggest that the most important obstacles to women’s entry to male academic network of universities are legal, cultural and family problems among others.