Gender Homophily in Team Formation (GHTF)

Project holder: 

Pauline Madiès (Département d’Economie, Sciences Po)

Research team: 

José De Sousa (LEMMA, Université Paris Panthéon-Assas / LIEPP, Sciences Po)

Project description: 

Workplaces are gendered. Women tend to work with 70% female colleagues, while men work with only 30% female colleagues. This significant gender segregation in the workplace is linked to the gender wage gap. A large body of literature also indicates that people tend to associate with others of the same gender, a tendency known as 'Gender Homophily.' This homophily may further contribute to gender segregation in the labor market, as it suggests a desire to interact with same-gender coworkers. We test this hypothesis in a lab experiment in which we allow participants to sort into teams endogenously. First, we measure gender homophily by studying whether women choose to team up with women, and men with men. Second, we delve further into the mechanisms behind gender homophily by introducing a new experiment that varies the prominence and visibility of errors across different treatments.