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7Gender Diversity Isn't a Plus, It's a Business Imperative

When I was attending my daughter's varsity basketball game last spring, I took a few minutes to observe the crowd around me in the bleachers and noticed something interesting. Many of the women in attendance were sitting toward the top of the bleachers, grouped together closely to both enjoy the game and socialize, while the men watching the game were spaced a few feet apart along the benches. They bantered back and forth, exchanged fist bumps and high fives after good plays, but their social interactions were otherwise limited.

I'm not here to advance a theory about the reasons why those men and women behaved differently at the basketball game, but it did raise a few questions about the social habits and personality traits of men and women. There is no doubt that, when observed as a group, men and women tend to behave differently from one another. Whether those differences are a result of the social and cultural expectations of the times or are due to other factors is a difficult question to answer, but the fact remains that observable differences in behavior do exist.

That very point, that differences exist, that they are palpable, demonstrable, and have far-reaching impact, is the starting point for this discussion of why gender diversity matters. Nature promotes diversity all the time, even if that isn't always reflected in our culture at large. Take, for example, a 1995 study where Swiss scientist Claus Wedekind ...