Study: The Impact of Gender Diversity on the Performance of Business Teams: Evidence from a Field Experiment (Tinbergen Institute, 2011, Hoogendoorn, Oosterbeek, van Praag)
Finding: Teams with an equal gender mix perform better than male-dominated and female-dominated teams in terms of sales, profits and earnings per share. – Click To Tweet
InPower Insight: Neither women nor men are “better” at delivering business outcomes; together we are stronger.
Summary: In order to explore a theory that balanced gender teams lead to better results, researchers at the University of Amsterdam formed 45 teams of female-dominant, male-dominant and gender balanced teams of 12 to form and run real companies over the space of a year. Through the experiment the teams’ performance were judged on sales and shareholder value. Consistently, team performance as measured by sales, profit, profit per share and probability of profit increased as he percentage of women on the team increased to 55%, after which performance began to diminish. (This finding is consistent with a study reported in the Harvard Business Review in the same year, using a different methodology.)
The researchers believe, based on their effort to isolate why gender balanced teams performed so much better, that these balanced teams did a better job of monitoring their work. Specifically, equally gender diverse teams do a better job at ensuring everyone is doing their part, meeting their obligations and deadlines. Essentially, gender balanced teams are better at ensuring equal participation, which ensures that everyone’s effort and talent is applied to the business. When everyone contributes, results improve.
Career Coaching Tip: As you are putting together teams to tackle business problems in your area of responsibility, work to ensure gender diversity by including equal numbers of women and men. This not only increases opportunities for women in your business to gain valuable experience, it increases the likelihood of the teams’ success. Share the results of this research with others developing teams to help them as well as raise awareness of the importance of gender balance in business.
