Endogenously Emerging Gender Diversity in an Experimental Team Work Setting

We study gender diversity and performance in endogenously formed teams. Participants choose to either perform a cooperation task with members of the own gender only or in a mixed-gender team. We find that independent of the team choice, initially men cooperate significantly more than women. In subsequent periods, men prefer the successful men-only teams, resulting in significantly higher profits for men compared to women. Only over time, this endogenously emerged “gender profit gap” closes.