# Women Networking Groups: Six Types, and What Each One Gives You Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/women-networking-groups/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/women-networking-groups.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving networking at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Women networking groups fall into six types, from national bodies to employer resource groups and online communities. How they differ, and which one fits you. ## Key facts - Title: Women Networking Groups: Six Types, and What Each One Gives You - Category: Networking - Primary skill: Networking - Related skills: Building Confidence, Influence - Primary keyword: women networking groups - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/women-networking-groups/ ## What this page covers - Women networking groups fall into six types, from national bodies to employer resource groups and online communities. How they differ, and which one fits you. - Practical guidance for women networking groups - How this topic connects to Networking ## Detailed explanation Women networking groups fall into six broad types: national membership organizations, industry networks, employer women's networks, local chapters, online communities, and business-owner bodies. They differ in what they cost, how much of your calendar they take, and who you actually end up meeting. The type you pick matters far more than the name on the door. Search the phrase and you get roster after roster — the same organizations, a paragraph each, a membership fee at the bottom. What none of those lists tells you is which kind suits someone in your position, or what happens after you pay and walk in for the first time. That second part is where the whole thing is decided. ## The six types of women networking groups The category is wider than the rosters suggest, and these six ask genuinely different things of you. One costs several hundred dollars a year. One is free and already inside your building. Some put you in a room every month; one never puts you in a room at all. Read them for fit, not for prestige. ### National membership organizations The big formal bodies: the National Association of Female Executives, the American Business Women's Association, Ellevate Network, eWomenNetwork. Dues, a member directory, conferences, leadership programs, and usually some form of mentor matching. Their real structure is easy to miss. ABWA reports around 15,000 members spread across roughly 400 chapters, running more than 5,000 business and networking meetings a year in hundreds of cities. That means a national organization is really a federation of small local groups — and your experience of it will be shaped almost entirely by the chapter you attend, not by the brand you joined. Before paying, find out where your nearest chapter meets and how many people actually turn up. ### Industry-specific networks Groups organized around one field: CREW for commercial real estate, She Runs It for marketing, media and technology, Sistas in Sales for women of color in sales, WITI in technology, and the Association of Women in International Trade, which runs monthly speaker events and keeps a job bank. The advantage here is conversational. Everyone in the room does work related to yours, so a first exchange starts from shared ground instead of [a cold introduction](/knowledge/networking/networking-conversation-starters/), and the things you know are immediately useful to somebody. Your questions sound normal rather than conspicuous. The limit is the flip side of the same fact: the value is tied to the field, so it thins out if you move sectors. ### Employer women's networks and employee resource groups The category the "best groups" lists almost never mention, because there is nothing to link to. Employee resource groups are typically grassroots — formed by volunteer employees inside one company and then officially sponsored by the organization. For anyone employed and early on, this is the lowest-cost entry point available. It is free, it is in your building, and the members already share your context. It is also the only type where taking part [raises your visibility](/knowledge/influence/networking-at-work/) with the people who decide your work and your progression. The trade-off is that it sits inside your employer's politics rather than outside them, which is exactly why it works better alongside an external group than instead of one. ### Local and regional groups City-level organizations and independent circles: The Chicago Network, New York Women in Business, the Women.NYC programs, and the many women's networking chapters organized through Meetup. What distinguishes this type is repetition. You see the same faces month after month, and repeated contact is how trust actually forms — far more reliably than a single impressive conversation at a conference. Meetup-based groups in particular cost nothing and expect nothing, which makes them a sensible place to [practice being in the room](/knowledge/confidence/boost-self-confidence/) before committing money anywhere. The constraint is geography: you get whoever happens to live nearby. ### Online communities Digital groups and the virtual arms of the national bodies. The scale is genuinely striking — LinkedIn's Connect: Professional Women's Network is cited at roughly 446,000 members. That number is also the warning. A group of that size gives you exposure, not relationships; nobody notices whether you are there, so nothing builds unless you deliberately move a conversation into one-to-one contact. Treat online communities as reach rather than depth. They are excellent for finding people outside your city and poor at turning them into anyone who would take your call. ### Entrepreneur and business-owner networks NAWBO, the Women's Business Enterprise National Council, the Women Presidents' Organization, and foundation-run programs for founders. WBENC is the largest certifier of women-owned businesses in the United States; the Women Presidents' Organization sets an eligibility bar around annual revenue. Read this type carefully, because it is where the wrong choice usually happens. These are certification, capital, and advocacy bodies for women who own companies — not career networks for women who are employed. The rosters list them alongside everything else without flagging the difference, so it is entirely possible to pay for a membership built around a business you do not have. ## Which women networking group fits you now Start from your situation rather than the rankings. If you are employed, the sequence that costs least and works fastest is your employer's network or resource group first, then one industry network in your field. If you run something, the owner-focused bodies are the ones built for you. If you are still studying or in your first year, a free local chapter or a campus-linked group gets you practice without a financial decision attached. Then apply the only rule that consistently holds: one group you actually attend beats three memberships you let lapse in March. Pick the one whose meetings you can realistically reach. It is worth being clear-eyed about what the fee buys. It buys a recurring room, a directory, and a calendar — all of them passive. The one benefit that arrives from attendance alone is the one members describe most warmly: the end of feeling like the only person dealing with this. Sources on these groups return again and again to peer support, shared experience, and having somewhere you can say out loud what you need. Every other payoff — mentors, [referrals](/knowledge/networking/referral-networking/), someone recommending you for a role — requires you to do something specific. Which is why the choice of type should account for the part you personally find hard. If keeping up with people is what slips, a small local chapter with a fixed monthly slot does more for you than a network of 400,000. If walking in cold is the obstacle, start with the group where you already know a few faces. Getting a read on [where your habits stand](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) is a quicker way to narrow the list than reading another roster. ## The habits that make a group worth the dues Two women can join the same chapter on the same evening and have completely different years. The membership is identical; what differs is a handful of ordinary behaviors, none of which are fixed features of a personality. **Networking**, in the sense that matters inside a group, is mostly about selection and follow-through. A chapter may hold hundreds of names, and you cannot maintain hundreds of relationships — so decide which few you will genuinely invest in, keep a wider circle warm enough to answer if you reach out, and let the rest sit dormant without guilt. Give before you ask: information, an introduction, an opening someone would want to see. Then follow up within a day of meeting someone, referring to something you actually talked about. That one habit is what separates a badge from a person who remembers you in April. **Building Confidence** is what gets you through the door the first time, and it runs opposite to how most people imagine it. You will not feel ready in advance. You get comfortable by attending, then attending again, until the room stops costing you anything. So decide now which meeting, which date, and how you will get there — a decision made in advance is what defeats the quiet drift into never going. Treat the first visit as one evening, not a commitment to a year. **Influence** is what stops you being the quiet member at the back for eighteen months. Groups advertise mentoring, and mentoring is genuinely offered; the things that move faster — someone putting your name forward — go to members whose work other members have seen. The route to that is unglamorous. Volunteer to organize a session, prepare something, host the discussion, write the summary. Be willing to ask, because the worst answer is no. And be known for something specific, so that when a member hears about an opening, a name comes to mind. None of the three is a setting on your personality, and the one holding you back is rarely obvious from the inside. That is what the **free Job Skills Test** is built for: seven minutes, a read across all twelve of the work skills the framework treats as learnable, and a clear answer on [which habit to build first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/). It gives your first three months in a group a target, instead of just attendance. ## Choosing well is already half of it Some of this may already sound like how you operate — the message you sent after meeting someone because you said you would, the introduction you made without anything in it for you. Those are the same behaviors, just not yet applied on purpose. The rest is learnable, and you get to choose which parts are worth your attention right now. A gap in any of them is not a fixed feature of who you are; it is something nobody taught you, and it responds to practice. It also gets more valuable rather than less, because the further into a career you go, the more depends on people who know what you can do. You have just spent longer choosing a type of group than most members spend thinking about it in their entire first year — that is the part almost everybody skips. So the remaining question is a small one. ## Start with an honest read on your own skills You have the map of the six types and a sense of which one suits where you are. The missing piece is what you are bringing into the room. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills that takes about seven minutes. It scores you across all twelve — networking, confidence, and influence among them — and shows you which ones will make the biggest difference to you right now. A simple order of operations: take it, note your two lowest scores, then pick one group from the type that fits you and go to a single meeting this month. **Get my skills profile** *Free, seven minutes, and the results are on screen straight away.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Women networking groups fall into six types, from national bodies to employer resource groups and online communities. How they differ, and which one fits you. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Networking. It also relates to Building Confidence, Influence. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/confidence.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/women-networking-groups/ Preferred summary: "Women networking groups fall into six types, from national bodies to employer resource groups and online communities. How they differ, and which one fits you." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.