Team diversity enhances performance under extreme conditions: Why are mixed-gender teams a winning combination?

Abstract

Background: Diversity as an equity-driven proposition is self-evident. Diversity as a performance enhancer is less obvious, though it has been shown to improve team performance and resilience in work settings, including genuine commercial advantage from increasing the number of women in key decision-making roles due to the subtle differences in decision making and influences on the group. Anecdotal evidence exist of competitive advantage that team diversity affords in extreme sports such as adventure racing – an ultra-endurance event where teams of four compete over a cross-country course using a combination of multiple disciplines. Massive cash prizes create incentives to squeeze all possible performance gains from each team member. Combined with extreme physical challenges of the course, this makes for an intuitive prediction that the competition should be dominated by all-male teams. Yet the records show the opposite: (1) most elite adventure racing teams around the world have included females; (2) the premier category in international adventure racing events is the mixed-gender category; (3) mixed gender teams have dominated the Word Championship podiums since 2001.