The Harvard Business Review (February 2008) reports star Wall Street female analysts tend to maintain their status when they switch firms, but their male counterparts don't.
Boris Groysberg, a Harvard Business School professor who focuses on organizational behavior and management, spotted the performance gender gap while studying earlier research into the work of star stock analysts. The data reveals that top female analysts--defined by their rankings in lists published by Institutional Investor--were more likely than men to have built their success on relationships with clients and companies they covered.
By contrast, male analysts relied more on internal networks within their companies. The women also considered a wider variety of factors in assessing prospective employers. Male analysts tended to emphasize compensation in their decisions to switch firms.
The female analysts' more successful transitions might be partly inadvertent--the women could have felt compelled to build external relationships because they had more difficulty than their male colleagues securing in-house mentors. Sexist attitudes could force them to work harder to protect their portability in the industry. And women generally look for organizations "that will welcome them as individuals," raising the odds they will be successful at the new firm.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2008