Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Strength In Numbers: A Field Experiment In Gender, Influence, And Group Dynamics, Olga B. Stoddard, Christopher F. Karpowitz, Jessica Preece

Faculty Publications

Policy interventions to increase women’s presence in the workforce and leadership positions vary in their intensity, with some including a lone or token woman and others setting higher quotas. However, little is known about how the resulting group gender compositions influence individuals’ experiences and broader workplace dynamics. In this paper, we investigate whether token women are disadvantaged compared to women on majority-women mixed-gender teams. We conducted a multi-year field experiment with a top-10 undergraduate accounting program that randomized the gender composition of semester-long teams. Using laboratory, survey, and administrative data, we find that even after accounting for their proportion of …