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Christov-Moore, L., Simpson, E. A., Coudé, G., Grigaityte, K., Iacoboni, M., & Ferrari, P. F. (2014). Empathy: gender effects in brain and behavior. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 46 Pt 4(P4), 604–27.

Evidence suggests that there are differences in the capacity for empathy between males and females. However, how deep do these differences go? Stereotypically, females are portrayed as more nurturing and empathetic, while males are portrayed as less emotional and more cognitive. Some authors suggest that observed gender differences might be largely due to cultural expectations about gender roles. However, empathy has both evolutionary and developmental precursors, and can be studied using implicit measures, aspects that can help elucidate the respective roles of culture and biology. This article reviews evidence from ethology, social psychology, economics, and neuroscience to show that there are fundamental differences in implicit measures of empathy, with parallels in development and evolution. Studies in nonhuman animals and younger human populations (infants/children) offer converging evidence that sex differences in empathy have phylogenetic and ontogenetic roots in biology and are not merely cultural byproducts driven by socialization. We review how these differences may have arisen in response to males’ and females’ different roles throughout evolution. Examinations of the neurobiological underpinnings of empathy reveal important quantitative gender differences in the basic networks involved in affective and cognitive forms of empathy, as well as a qualitative divergence between the sexes in how emotional information is integrated to support decision making processes. Finally, the study of gender differences in empathy can be improved by designing studies with greater statistical power and considering variables implicit in gender (e.g., sexual preference, prenatal hormone exposure). These improvements may also help uncover the nature of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders in which one sex is more vulnerable to compromised social competence associated with impaired empathy.

Campbell, L. G., Mehtani, S., Dozier, M. E., & Rinehart, J. (2013). Gender-heterogeneous working groups produce higher quality science. PloS One, 8(10), e79147.

Here we present the first empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that a gender-heterogeneous problem-solving team generally produced journal articles perceived to be higher quality by peers than a team comprised of highly-performing individuals of the same gender. Although women were historically underrepresented as principal investigators of working groups, their frequency as PIs at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis is now comparable to the national frequencies in biology and they are now equally qualified, in terms of their impact on the accumulation of ecological knowledge (as measured by the h-index). While women continue to be underrepresented as working group participants, peer-reviewed publications with gender-heterogeneous authorship teams received 34% more citations than publications produced by gender-uniform authorship teams. This suggests that peers citing these publications perceive publications that also happen to have gender-heterogeneous authorship teams as higher quality than publications with gender uniform authorship teams. Promoting diversity not only promotes representation and fairness but may lead to higher quality science.

Bowers, C. A., Pharmer, J. A., & Salas, E. (2000). When Member Homogeneity is Needed in Work Teams: A Meta-Analysis. Small Group Research, 31(3), 305–327.

A meta-analytic integration of 57 effect sizes from 13 studies (567 teams, 2,258 participants) was performed to determine if groups that are homogeneous with respect to gender, ability level, and personality achieve higher levels of performance than teams that are heterogeneous on these attributes. Although individual studies often show marked differences between homogeneous and heterogeneous groups, the results of this integration show the combined effect sizes of these studies to be small, though not significant, in favor of heterogeneous groups. It appears that the significant effects found in many of the included studies can be attributed to the type and difficulty of the task used in the investigation. Implications for team construction are discussed.

The research aims to study the distribution of hourly wages for men and women in Portugal, adopting a quantile regression (QR) approach. Two databases are used for the estimation of the wage functions: the Quadros de Pessoal, Linked Employer-Employee Data (QP-LEED) and the Inquérito ao Emprego, Portuguese Labour Force Survey (IE-LFS). Three basic models are considered to explain the hourly wages for men and women: the first model, using each database separately, is estimated adopting education, tenure, potential experience, activity sector, and job as independent variables; the second, using data from QP-LEED, includes additional determinants related to firm (firm size and foreign social capital); and the third, using data from the IE-LFS, includes additional independent variables related to the worker's family (marital status and children). The results indicate that: (i) Regardless of the database used, the quantile regression (QR) shows superiority over OLS approach; (ii) In general, the same model specification estimated using each database - one administrative (QP-LEED), and the other based on a survey (IE-LFS) - present convergent results; (iii) Independently of the database used, the equations for men and for women reveal that the levels of education have a higher impact on wage determination; (iv) In general, the variables related to the firm contribute to the explanation of wages of men and women while those related to family only contribute to the explanation of men's wages; and (v) the clear different returns for the same characteristics found between men and women, and the pattern of differences which increase across quantiles strongly indicates that the present study should continue in the future, with the analysis of the explanation of the gender wage gap.