A major new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that research teams with a balanced number of men and women have a significantly higher likelihood of producing more innovative and impactful work than their unbalanced counterparts.

Furthermore, it implies that the more diverse the environment, the better the outcome for those who fund the research and those in whose interest the work is done. It also supports the conclusion that, when we have mixed-gender teams working on pressing issues, we get faster breakthroughs.

In reaching these conclusions, the team evaluated millions of scientific papers published since the year 2000 in 45 different medical research subfields. It focused on two key metrics related to each scientific paper. The first metric was novelty, or the degree to which a paper combined existing ideas in innovative ways. The other metric was impact, measured by a paper’s total number of citations.

Using a “big data” methodology, the researchers were able to conclusively show that mixed-gender teams produced work that significantly surpassed the average for all teams in terms of novelty and impact.

Furthermore, teams that had an equal number of men and women - or close to it - had the highest likelihood of novel and impactful results. In fact, gender-balanced teams with six or more members were nearly 10% more likely to publish novel work than the base rate, and almost 15% more likely to be among the most highly cited papers.

The conclusions held in all 45 medical subfields the team studied, and the strengths of mixed-gender teams were apparent whether teams were led by a man or a woman. Preliminary work published with the report also indicates that the team’s findings are generalizable across scientific disciplines beyond medicine.

 

- PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, August 29, 2022, “Gender-diverse teams produce more novel and higher-impact scientific ideas,” by Yang Yang, et al. © 2022 National Academy of Science.  All rights reserved.