Women’s social networks are famous for being dense. We talk amongst ourselves, online and offline.

Before women entered the workforce, their social networks were almost entirely female. Even still women’s networks are more female than male, and contain fewer weak ties (See Ronald Burt). Their networks are less rich in those who can bridge, broker deals, and introduce them to people with power. Women’s networks tend to include fewer cross sex contacts, which hampers women in fields that are male-driven. The critical period for entrepreneur’s life cycles are the 20’s and 30’s: this is when you accumulate resources and contacts to sustain later ventures. These are precisely the years when married women with children suffer. Their networks tend to become more female, more dense. This is changing, but there is truth to it.

The concept of network analysis provides a rich framework to analyze why women don’t run for office as much, don’t become CEO’s as much, don’t become Masters of the Universe as much. This is based on the assumption that women are disadvantaged because they are excluded from key social relationships. For decades now, scholars have concluded that women tend to have more dense networks than men (in which contacts all know each other and talk to each other, without expanding out, or forming “weak ties,” those people who are casual acquaintances but help you get ahead.

Women, scholars say, should see if they are sacrificing diversity for density- strong ties overhwhelm the weak ties that are so valuable for business and politics. Those with children are characterized by all-female reference groups. A practical example includes investigating salary negotiations: women tend to ask other women in their social network what they earn, which makes us feel better about ourselves but causes us to lose perspective on what the men in similar positions might earn (see Robin Ely).

So it was with interest that at the PDF Conference today, I was watching a presentation of a visual map of the blogosphere in politics and technology. “Mommybloggers,” according to Matthew Hurst from Microsoft Live Labs, occupy their own dense hub of the political blogosphere, but they’re not interconnected with other nodes in the blogosphere, such as DailyKos, or big tech bloggers, or just big deal bloggers like Jeff Jarvis’ Buzzmachine. According to the chart, “mommybloggers” occupy a dense and busy spot on the network map of the poli-tech blogosphere. But like women’s social networks in general, our networks are dense and familiar, and not as outreaching as others. We link to each other, and talk to each other a good deal. Do you think that’s a fair characterization?

Do tight-knit online blog communities hold politically-motivated women back? If women spent less time blogging and linking to our online friends and more time cross-pollinating with larger sites in the political blogosphere, would we gain political might, or perhaps just new perspectives?