Gender-Heterogeneous Working Groups Produce Higher Quality Science

Abstract

Here we present the first empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that a gender-heterogeneous problem-solving team generally produced journal articles perceived to be higher quality by peers than a team comprised of highly-performing individuals of the same gender. Although women were historically underrepresented as principal investigators of working groups, their frequency as PIs at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis is now comparable to the national frequencies in biology and they are now equally qualified, in terms of their impact on the accumulation of ecological knowledge (as measured by the h-index). While women continue to be underrepresented as working group participants, peer-reviewed publications with gender-heterogeneous authorship teams received 34% more citations than publications produced by gender-uniform authorship teams. This suggests that peers citing these publications perceive publications that also happen to have gender-heterogeneous authorship teams as higher quality than publications with gender uniform authorship teams. Promoting diversity not only promotes representation and fairness but may lead to higher quality science.

Gender-based homophily in research: A large-scale study of man-woman collaboration

“…Both males and females, on average, regardless of the gender-defined collaboration type (same-sex, mixed-sex, or solo publications), publish in journals with prestige that is relatively low. Articles written in mixed-sex collaboration are, on average, published in more prestigious journals than are those written in same-sex collaboration (which is consistent with previous literature; see Campbell, Mehtani, Dozier, & Rinehart, 2013).…”

Gender and collaboration patterns in a temporal scientific authorship network

“…Indeed, much effort is being invested in methods for mitigating these biases, such as compiling online lists of women researchers to facilitate their invitation as conference speakers and nomination for prizes [52,53,54]; making data on the gender balance in conferences and panels more visible online [50]; and encouraging journals to adopt a policy of double-blind reviews, which has been showed to reduce biases (such as increasing representation of women authors [55]). Such efforts might help improve scientific productivity by increasing gender heterogeneity in the scientific workforce [56]. For a thorough review on the issue of gender bias in science (with a focus on neuroscience) and recommended efforts to mitigate it, see Schrouff et al [2].…”

Shining a Light on Diversity in Team Science*

“…The presence of leaders who are underrepresented minorities (URMs) benefits both trainees and early career faculty, as they can see role models congruent with their own identity (2), potentially increasing the proportion of URMs in a positive feedback loop. In the research setting, having a diverse group of scientists also helps disrupt “groupthink,” and heterogeneous study groups are more likely to produce higher quality science (3).…”

“…Despite a steady increase in the diversity of academic medicine faculty, it remains less heterogeneous than the general population in North America (2–6). While a greater focus of the published literature has been on the gender gap, studies have also found that URM faculty members have fewer publications and are less likely to be promoted than their White counterparts (7).…”