Many People Believe Gender-Diverse Teams are More Productive than Gender-Homogeneous Teams
New INFORMS Journal Management Science Study Key Takeaways:
- People believe that gender-diverse teams are more productive than gender-homogeneous teams.
- Stereotypes regarding occupations matter for people’s assessments of the productivity of women compared to men.
- Policies to reduce gender segregation may fail if they do not successfully alter job stereotypes.
BALTIMORE, MD, December 20, 2023 – It’s no secret: men and women work differently. They have different strengths and weaknesses and productivity levels depending on the task. Most men work in occupations where less than 20% of the employees are women, and a majority of women work in occupations where less than 30% of the employees are men.
New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science finds that while gender stereotypes at work are expected, most people do bet on diversity and feel that diverse teams are better, but are they more productive?
“We find that people believe that gender-diverse teams are more productive than gender-homogeneous teams. At the same time, stereotypes regarding occupations matter for people’s assessments of the productivity of women compared to men,” says Robert Stüber of the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design at New York University, Abu Dhabi.
Gender stereotypes regarding tasks are important for hiring decisions in teams. At the same time, based on the findings, the researchers document a common belief that gender-diverse teams are more productive than gender-homogeneous teams.
“The segregation that exists could be the result of perceived job-specific productivity differences between men and women,” says Stüber. “It could also result from the belief that homogeneous teams perform better or from in-group bias of male or female recruiters.”
The researchers investigate these explanations through the lens of students and personnel managers. The subjects bet on the productivity of teams that are homogeneous with respect to gender at the outset and then either remain homogeneous or become diverse. The teams work on tasks that differ with respect to gender stereotypes. Interestingly, the researchers find the same results for students and personnel managers.
“Women are picked more often for the stereotypically female task, and men are picked more often for the stereotypically male task, however, subjects believe that gender-diverse teams perform better, especially in the task with complementarities, and they display an own-gender bias,” says Stüber.
The study, “Betting on Diversity – Occupational Segregation and Gender Stereotypes,” is conducted by Stüber alongside Urs Fischbacher of the University of Konstanz and Dorothea Kübler of Technische Universität Berlin.
“Our results indicate that the gender segregation of many occupations is not caused by beliefs in the higher productivity of homogeneous teams because the subjects predict gender-diverse teams to perform better than homogeneous teams. Rather, the findings are consistent with segregation resulting from gender stereotypes regarding the tasks. We observe that task stereotypes influence bets on whether adding a woman or a man will make a team more productive,” continued Stüber.
“When making policies to reduce gender segregation, it’s important to keep in mind they may fail if they do not successfully alter job stereotypes.”
About INFORMS and Management Science
Management Science is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly journal focused on research using quantitative approaches to study all aspects of management in companies and organizations. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for data and decision science professionals. More information is available at www.informs.org or @informs.
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