A Meta-Analytic Examination of the Gender Difference in Creative Performance

Studies examining gender and creative performance ratings have offered mixed results. The current meta-analysis integrates insights from gender role theories (Eagly, 1987; Eagly & Karau, 2002) with Woodman et al. (1993) interactionist perspective of creativity to identify factors that explain these observed inconsistencies across studies. Cumulating decades of research from 259 independent studies (N = 79,915), we find a male advantage in creative performance (delta = .13). An examination of contextual moderators reveals that this gender gap is contingent on several social and cultural factors. We observe a decline in the creativity gender gap when the country-level cultural context of the sample is communal and an increase when it is agentic. Results also show that the gender disparity declined over time, but industry gender composition did not influence the gender gap. Interestingly, we find that the gender gap is larger when creative performance is self- versus other-reported. Finally, methodological contingency factors such as publication status, study setting, creativity type, and occupational creativity requirements were also assessed. Overall, our findings clarify gender's relationship with creative performance and underscore the importance of undertaking contingency-based approaches in future research.