![Dr Eun Young Song. Picture by Jamie Kidston/ANU Dr Eun Young Song. Picture by Jamie Kidston/ANU](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/steve.evans/99fa228a-b10a-4889-bc47-d0507e50076b.jpg/r0_35_1200_675_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Women in high-status positions aren't trusted by the people they work with, according to new research done at the Australian National University.
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The same is not true of men in senior jobs, according to Dr Eun Young Song who led the research.
"It's great to help women move up the ladder, but this study shows even when they do succeed, women aren't likely to be trusted by the people around them," Dr Song said.
"We found despite the fact these women are often in supervisory roles, and are well connected, their high status doesn't benefit them.
"It's less of an issue for women in junior positions.
"It's also the opposite for men. When they occupy these senior positions, people tend to trust them more than junior male colleagues, or women in senior positions."
The study looked at responses from two surveys of employees who worked on the major London underground rail project in 2014 and 2015.
Some caveats: the people surveyed were in Britain so it's not clear whether women in Australia suffer the same discrimination; and the area studied was a construction project so it's not clear if women would suffer the same sort of discrimination - whether better or worse - in other occupations.
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Dr Song said that more research was needed.
But she felt that her work showed the importance of trust within an organisation.
"It makes sharing information easier, which in turn helps with achieving common goals," she said.
"The importance of networks in business is much talked about, but we need to consider how widely held beliefs about women's competence and social status might impact those networks.
"Efforts to achieve gender equality should be paired with a society-wide push to break down these gender-status beliefs.
"Without this, promoting more women to more senior positions won't solve the problem - and may even exacerbate it. We need to move beyond simply telling individual women to improve their communication skills."
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