Homophily is one of the robust findings in social network studies. It persists even in a diverse population where the opportunity to develop homogeneous friendship is not greater than a mere chance and the process of developing heterogeneous friendship is facilitated. In this study, we introduce the Framework for Intergroup Relations and Multiple Affiliations Networks (FIRMAN), derived from social identity theory and social network framework, that can explain why that is the case. We begin by explaining its components: social identity space, social identity distance, length of ties, tie outreachability, and tie capacity. Then, through 7000 agent-based simulations, we demonstrate how the interaction of tie outreachability and tie capacity constraints heterogeneous friendship formations, which in turn make homophily inevitable even in a very diverse population. Surprisingly, the presence of even a small percentage (< 15%) of agents who can only develop homogeneous friendships can affect the whole population, preventing other agents from developing heterogenous friendships. We conclude by providing some directions for future research.

Unlike in Western society, Javanese people, the largest ethnic group in Indonesia, do not use family names, but only personal names representing their parents’ hopes. The longer the names, the more aspirations the parents wish for their children. We use this naming practice as a proxy to investigate gender equality progress in Javanese society. Employing a series of quantitative text and statistical analyses on a publicly available massive dataset (N = 2,906,978), we found that despite personal names of both genders getting longer over the years, in general Javanese males have significantly longer names than their female counterparts, confirming our hypothesis. However, as predicted, their name length discrepancies eventually dissipate at different points in time for different regions. We further discuss how these findings may illuminate the progress of gender equality in Javanese society that spread from urban, to suburb, and finally rural areas.