Gender Diversity and Productive Signaling in the Workplace

This theoretical paper explores the effects of gender diversity in the workplace. The key assumption is that workers of one gender want to signal the possession of favorable characteristics to their colleagues of the other gender. The analysis suggests that the presence of the other gender weakly increases production, that it has no effects if there are strong material incentives, and that it might influence only the behavior of workers who have desirable characteristics. Further, some gender diversity maximizes group effort if men and women have similar expected characteristics.