Research from management scholars has identified a 'collaboration penalty' faced by women working in same-gender groups, which solo women like Taylor Swift avoid. The study, which examined data from venture capital, professional sports, healthcare and entertainment, found that all-women teams are perceived as more threatening and likely to challenge power structures, leading to lower funding and compensation.
In venture capital, all-women founding teams receive just 2.4% of dollars, a figure unchanged for three decades. An experiment showed that participants viewed all-women investor groups as more prone to 'social competition', and thus less deserving of resources, even when pitches were identical. All-men groups faced no such perception.
In professional sports, analysis of 1,145 competitions across 44 sports from 2014-2021 found that solo men and women earned similar prize money, but all-women teams earned less than half of all-men teams, despite winning championships. Another experiment confirmed that all-women groups were seen as more socially competitive, predicting lower expected compensation.
This penalty extends to top earners: no women appear in Forbes' top 50 highest-paid athletes in 2025, and only one of the top 15 highest-paid female athletes plays a team sport. The researchers argue that the bias is not about competence but about assumptions of motivation, with all-women teams seen as pushing an agenda while all-men teams are just doing business.
