Gender-diverse teams produce more novel and higher-impact scientific ideas

Yang Yang, Tanya Y. Tian, Teresa K. Woodruff, Benjamin Jones and Brian Uzzi
Additional contact information
Yang Yang: a Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556;; b Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and Data Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208;; c Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556;
Tanya Y. Tian: d New York University Shanghai, New York University, Shanghai, China;
Teresa K. Woodruff: e Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MN 48824;
Brian Uzzi: b Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and Data Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208;; f Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208;; h The McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022, vol. 119, issue 36, e2200841119

Abstract: Science teams made up of men and women produce papers that are more novel and highly cited than those of all-men or all-women teams. These performance advantages increase the greater the team's gender balance and appear nearly universal. On average, they hold for small and large teams, the 45 subfields of medicine, and women- or men-led teams and generalize to published papers in all science fields over the last 20 y. Notwithstanding these benefits, gender-diverse teams remain underrepresented in science when compared to what is expected if the teams in the data had been formed without regard to gender. These findings reveal potentially new gender and teamwork synergies that correlate with scientific discoveries and inform diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.pnas.org/content/119/36/e2200841119.full (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nas:journl:v:119:y:2022:p:e2200841119

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by PNAS Product Team ().