Mixed gender research teams are still grossly underrepresented in science. At the same time, male and female teams are more likely to produce novel and highly cited research than same-sex teams.

Both findings are from new research Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This paper focuses on academic medicine. Because the author started writing during his COVID-19, and academic medicine is heavily funded. However, when the authors performed similar analyzes for subfields of medicine and other scientific fields, the results persisted.

“We did the same analysis for every other branch of science. Teams are better than same-sex teams,” said co-author Brian Uzi, Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “And the more gender-balanced you are on a mixed-gender team, the greater the impact.”

how good is it For example, in academic medicine, Uzzi and his own (mixed-gender) team found that papers published by teams of men and women were up to 7% more novel and cited than papers published by all men or only men. 15% more likely to All-female team.

While some previous research has compared scientific results for women and men, the takeaway from this new study is that “we are actually better together than apart from each other.” about it.

He continues: Probably very mixed results. But I wasn’t sure. When the results came out, they were so clear and systematic that we said, ‘We really found something. “

For the primary academic medical analysis, Uzzi and his team reviewed 6.6 million articles published in nearly 15,000 journals worldwide over 20 years. Given the size of their dataset, they used a computer algorithm to determine the scientist’s gender, male or female, from their names. (For this reason, this study does not address gender diversity beyond men and women.)

In 2000, Uzzi and his colleagues found that about 60% of teams of four included both men and women. By 2019, it was 70%. To see if this was more or less than you’d expect based on who is doing the science, Uzzi’s team looked at the number of men and women who had the same first year of publication, total number of publications, and country. We designed a model that randomly exchanges the authors of Based on this model, gender-diverse teams are significantly underrepresented across all team sizes, with up to him being underrepresented by 17%.

Next, to compare the performance of gender-diverse and same-sex teams, Uzzi and his colleagues had to determine the definition of novelty and find a way to measure it. Based on previous research, they defined a new paper as combining knowledge in a new way compared to existing combinations. Part of how they measured it was by looking at the journals referenced in a given paper and whether those journal combinations were common or rare.

To measure the impact of an article, Uzzi’s team followed previous research, which defines high-impact articles as those in the top 5% of citations published in a given year. (They also considered lasting effects.)

Exclusion of other factors, underlying mechanisms and caveats

Are there other explanations for these findings? Based on previous research, Uzzi and his team found that mixed-gender teams had different expertise levels, networks, age diversity, and international diversity characteristics compared to same-sex teams. I checked to see if Mixed-gender teams were found to be associated with factors such as diversity of topic-related expertise, greater network size, diversity in career age, and geographic diversity and internationality. However, none of these factors can explain the positive effects of gender diversity when controlled for. Neither did the reverse phenomenon explain it.

Gender diversity within teams ultimately “is a powerful correlate of novel and impactful scientific discoveries that are unrecognized but grow as teams become more gender-balanced,” the paper said. said.

Why is this? The paper is somewhat cautious here, saying that this is an area for future research. He said he suggested improving the process.

“Women may also offer perspectives on research questions that men do not have, and vice versa,” the paper states. Teams Her processes and information are more than additive, usually associated with all-female and all-male teams. “

Many business-oriented studies have found that gender diversity boosts corporate productivity, but some of these studies come with circumstantial and climate warnings. For example, one study found that in countries and industries where gender diversity is “normatively accepted”, gender diversity leads to increased market valuation and revenue.

Economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founder of the Center for Talent Innovation, said in an email Monday, “When it comes to the impact of talented women on innovation in medical research and other fields, the secret source is sponsorship.” Yes, but not representative.”Research citations in her book The Sponsorship Effect: How Investing in Others Makes You a Better Leader (Harvard Business Review, 2019), Hewlett states: Fund her project at the decision making table. (Hewlett was talking about business, but her research may offer insight into how some research teams are formed and operated.)

Uzzi said the downside of studying millions of papers in total was that he and his team weren’t able to delve into how those teams actually operated. But he said the conditions in which gender-diverse teams are most successful probably overlap with the conditions that make any scientific team work: equality and openness and openness to new and different ideas.