Why women in groups face a ‘collaboration penalty’ that solo female stars like Taylor Swift and Coco Gauff escape |
When Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour of all time in 2024, hauling in more than US$2 billion, it was hailed as a breakthrough for women in music.
But Swift’s success, it turns out, didn’t translate into broader gains for female artists. A closer look at the list of top-earning tours shows a clear pattern: Among the top 27 highest-grossing tours ever, there are no all-women ensembles, while 14 are all-male.
The same discrepancy appears in album sales: No all-women groups crack the top 100 bestselling artists of all time, while 41 all-men groups do.
Does Swift’s success stem from her status as a solo artist? As scholars of management who have researched organizational behavior and workplace bias, we argue that it did. And it points to a broader conclusion: Women working in same-gender groups face a “collaboration penalty” that solo women escape. Our work found that this pattern holds across venture capital, professional sports, health care and entertainment.
Why? Our research suggests it’s because all-women groups are seen as more threatening, as they’re more likely to challenge power structures through collective action. Notably, this perception was shared by male and female study participants alike – that is, women applied this bias to all-female groups just as men did.
The venture capital disappearing act
The starkest evidence appears in startup funding.
Despite years of diversity initiatives, all-women founding teams receive just 2.4% of venture capital dollars – a figure that has barely budged in three decades.
What explains this dramatic gap? We designed an experiment in which participants evaluated venture capital pitches that were identical in substance but varied by gender and solo vs. team status. The study’s........