It may not be breaking news, but another study is reinforcing something we’ve been told a few times, ladies — we’re better together than against one another.

According to a new study by the University of Notre Dame and Northwestern University, women who have a solid support group of other women are more likely to attain high-ranking leadership positions. 

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at the link between students’ graduate school social networks and placement into leadership positions. Researchers followed 700 former graduate students from a top-ranked U.S. business school as they were accepted into leadership-level positions. They then looked at the size of each person’s social network, the proportion of same-sex contacts, and how strong their network ties were.

The study found that more than 75 percent of high-ranking women had strong ties to a female-dominated inner circle, or at least strong ties to two or three women whom they communicated with frequently. As a result, those high-ranking women had an expected job placement level 2.5 times greater than women with small networks and male-dominated inner circles. 

However, the study also found that if men had a large network, regardless of gender, they were more likely to earn a high-ranking position.