Economic and Social Biases Affect the Success of All-Women Teams Across Industries

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:27:00 +0200

Research shows that women working in all-female teams face a 'collaboration penalty,' where they are perceived as more socially competitive and threatening, resulting in lower compensation, funding, and recognition than their male counterparts. This bias spans multiple fields, including music, professional sports, venture capital, and healthcare. While solo female stars like Taylor Swift and Coco Gauff achieve high earnings, all-women groups lag behind all-male groups. For example, no all-women musical groups appear in the top-grossing tours or top-selling albums, and women in team sports earn significantly less than men, despite similar performance. Experiments indicate that participants view all-women groups as pushing an agenda, whereas all-men groups are seen as simply conducting business. The disparity also appears in workplaces such as medical clinics, where women in all-women teams earn substantially less than men in all-men teams, even controlling for experience and performance