While women workers have often been thought to receive less support than men to advance in organizations, these sex differences have not been systematically explored. Using a sample of 486 male and 356 female employees of a large federal bureaucracy, this article examines differences between men and women in their reports of social support from four potential sources: male peers, female peers, male supervisors, and female supervisors. Our findings indicate that, in general, (1) employees receive the most support from coworkers of the same sex, but supervisors support their male and female subordinates about equally, (2) when other variables are held constant, female employees give equal support to their male and female coworkers, while men continue to favor male coworkers, (3) youth and high-level position increase the amount of support men receive from each other, but diminish or have no effect on the amount of support women receive from men, and (4) workers receive more support from opposite-sex colleagues when members of their sex constitute a relatively small proportion of the total group.
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