Gender and Willingness to Lead: Does the Gender Composition of Teams Matter?

Abstract

We explore how team gender composition affects willingness to lead by randomly assigning participants in an experiment to male- or female-majority teams. Irrespective of team gender composition, men are substantially more willing than women to lead their team. The pooled sample, and women separately, are more willing to lead female- than male-majority teams. An analysis of mechanisms reveals that a large share of the negative effect of male-majority teams on women's leadership aspirations is accounted for by a negative effect on women's confidence, influence, and expected support from team members.

Strength in Numbers: A Field Experiment in Gender, Influence, and Group Dynamics

“…Sample size limitations and the relative shortage of women in our study population prevented us assigning groups with token men. Previous laboratory work suggests that men in female-dominated settings do not face the same disadvantages as women in male-dominated settings (Born et al, 2020;Karpowitz and Mendelberg, 2014;Ott, 1989), but to our knowledge this has not yet been tested in a field experimental setting. Furthermore, to what extent are our results driven by the 1F woman being the lone woman versus just being outnumbered?…”

“…This leads to outcomes such as gender disparities in leadership because women correctly presume they will have less support from their team when men are in the majority (Born et al, 2020), women taking and getting less credit for joint work with men (Isaksson, 2018;Sarsons, 2017;Koffi, 2020), and women doing more of the "non-promotable" tasks in groups (Babcock et al, 2017).…”

An Experiment on Gender Representation in Majoritarian Bargaining

“…men are more likely than women to make the opening offer and men fight harder when left out from a coalition. As such, we contribute to the vast experimental economics literature on gender differences which has found that men are more inclined to enter competitions (Niederle and Vesterlund, 2007), contribute ideas (Coffman, 2014), lead a team (Born et al, 2020), or give advice on how to play strategically (Cooper and Kagel, 2016). Importantly, by now, it is also a robust finding that women's decision-making is influenced by gender stereotypes, as well as by gender composition, when the domain is stereo-typically perceived as disadvantageous for women (Coffman, 2014;Bordalo et al, 2019;Geraldes, 2020).…”

Does MBA education benefit women more than men? A longitudinal study

“…Women are more interested in keeping others from having power over them than they are in elevating themselves over others (Gruenfeld, 2020). Born et al (2020) found that men were substantially more willing than women to lead their team. Lewis and Krishnan (2004) showed that women had less power than men had.…”