What does it take to build a community where every voice is heard and valued?
The answer, not surprisingly, is complicated, but research shows gender makeup plays a significant role.
To better understand how to create an environment where people genuinely value one another’s perspectives, political science professors Chris Karpowitz and Jessica Preece, and economics professor Olga Stoddard, examined the impact of gender makeup on the perceived and real influence of individuals working in teams. Their study builds on Karpowitz’s earlier lab-based research, which revealed that women’s participation and influence in group discussions dropped substantially when they were outnumbered by men.
Jessica Preece, Chris Karpowitz, and Olga Stoddard pose outside the Spencer W. Kimball Building. -Credit: Benjamin Williams with the FHSS Creative Video Team
“We were curious whether those findings would extend outside of the laboratory in ‘real-world’ settings where teams are operating naturally,” says Stoddard.
The professors set up field experiments in both accounting and liberal arts classrooms at an undisclosed university and followed multiple student cohorts throughout their semester. The results, titled “Strength in Numbers? Gender Composition, Leadership, and Women’s Influence in Teams,” are published in the Journal of Political Economy.
Students in each classroom completed the “Landing on the Moon” task — a decision-making exercise where participants rank survival items individually and then as a group, aiming to match NASA’s expert ranking. Their influence was then measured using four metrics:
• Ranking alignment: how closely group outcomes matched individual preferences
• Peer surveys: monthly surveys that asked team members to rate who was most influential
• Speaking time: how much each individual contributed to group discussions
• Spokesperson selection: who was chosen to present the team’s conclusions
The results were consistent — women had significantly less influence in male-dominated teams. Even when their individual answers aligned more closely with expert rankings, their influence dropped by half in male-dominated groups.
“Even though the female students were coming in to these teams with the same — and in some cases more — leadership experience, they still faced a very large deficit in influence when they were outnumbered by men,” says Karpowitz.
However, when group composition shifted — either through majority representation or by assigning a woman as the formal team leader — the influence gap narrowed substantially. Leadership roles, in particular, had a ripple effect and elevated not just the assigned leader but the participation and impact of other women in the group. In contrast, assigning male leaders tended to preserve and exacerbate existing disparities.
These findings offer valuable insights for thoughtfully creating teams that enjoy a culture of respecting all perspectives and giving everyone space to contribute. “We need to pay attention to how groups are assigned, who is participating, and whose voices are being heard,” Stoddard says.
“I think this information is important for leaders in the workplace to know and understand that their female workers may be experiencing these types of penalties,” says Stoddard. “And as we show in the study, this is not related to women’s competence, as even the most excellent women in our sample experienced the same kind of penalty.”
Karpowitz agrees about paying attention to group makeup and dynamics, noting the role professors can play.
“Professors are in a unique situation because we’re often leading group discussions, so being sensitive to the ways in which the group composition can affect the dynamics — whether in terms of gender or other characteristics — can shape who has influence,” says Karpowitz. “College is a really important place to practice these skills of interacting together well and learning to value other people’s perspectives.”
By applying these lessons in the classroom — where students are learning not just content, but also how to work together — graduates can be prepared to help build communities where people truly listen to and learn from one another.
