Forum

Persistent gender gaps remain a pressing concern across societies, despite significant progress in recent years. While research has uncovered many drivers of gender inequality, one underexplored factor is the growing interconnectedness and specialization within modern workplaces. In collaborative settings where individuals contribute through distinct roles, it becomes increasingly difficult to objectively assess each member’s contribution—opening the door for gender related socio-psychological factors to influence the allocation of credit between team members. In this study, we examine the claiming and allocation of credit in a novel experimental paradigm where participants first train to specialise in a specific task and subsequently participate in team production with complementary tasks. Importantly, although the team production process always involves completing the same set of complementary tasks, across teams, we vary the gender composition of teams and the degree of specialisation. Together with a rich set of supplementary variables, we are able to shed light on the effects of workplace specialisation on gender inequality and the mechanisms by which these results arise.