Psychology of Space Exploration
crews for LDSF is defining the optimal combination of individuals to maximize
cohesion. In addition to size, experience, and culture, an important question is what
mixture of men and women is ideal for a long-duration space mission? Preferably,
we would rely on results from empirical studies on gender and cohesion; however,
few researchers have addressed this relationship specifically, fewer still in the con-
text of LDSF. Nevertheless, if we focus first on team performance in general, find-
ings from the business and military domains offer some insight into the effects of
gender. For example, manufacturing teams with a larger number of women tak-
ing on informal leadership roles within the team received higher supervisor ratings
than teams with fewer female leaders.^41 Likewise, as women were added to techni-
cal teams at a Fortune 500 aerospace company in a stepwise fashion, the addition
of one or two women did not adversely affect team performance in comparison to
that of all-male teams, and adding three or four women produced a slightly positive
effect on team performance.^42 In contrast, some studies suggest that gender hetero-
geneity is problematic for teams, at least in terms of ratings of team effectiveness,
particularly when there is diversity in composition variables beyond gender, like
ethnic and cultural background. Gayle Baugh and George Graen found that mem-
bers of project teams in a state regulatory agency rated their teams as less effective
when the members varied in terms of gender and race than when the team mem-
bers were all male or all white. However, ratings of the teams by outside evaluators
showed no differences with regard to gender and race.^43
As already described, there are few studies focused exclusively on gender and
cohesion; however, available research does suggest that the inclusion of women
on a team, at the very least, does not negatively affect cohesion and in some cases
actually improves cohesion. In a military context, arguably a better analog to space-
flight than business, a Women in Combat Task Force Study Group concluded that
- Mitchell J. Neubert, “Too Much of a Good Thing or the More the Merrier? Exploring the
Dispersion and Gender Composition of Informal Leadership in Manufacturing Teams,” Small
Group Research 30, no. 5 (1995): 635–646. - Janet W. Burris, “The Impact of Gender Diversity on Technical Team Effectiveness,”
Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering 62, no. 10-B (May
2002): 4715. - Gayle S. Baugh and George B. Graen, “Effects of Team Gender and Racial Composition
on Perceptions of Team Performance in Cross-functional Teams,” Group and Organization
Management 22, no. 3 (1997): 366–383.