Research shows no gender differences in creative thinking ability and personality disposition for creativity.

Creativity judgments are associated with stereotypically masculine traits.

Men are rewarded for creativity more than women are, and they receive greater support for creativity at work.

Unequal recognition has consequences for developing and realizing creative potential.

Women are underrepresented in positions that signal high creativity, from Hollywood to the sciences to writing. In 2017, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged six major film studios with discrimination against women directors, but almost 10 years later, the situation has not improved much.

There are few women Nobel prize winners (7% overall and only 3% in the sciences). Only two women won the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics. Gender disparity in who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize is also pronounced; women received 14% of the prizes. Although the number of women winners has been on the rise since the 1990s, it is still below 30%.

Yet, research consistently shows that there are no gender differences in the key abilities and traits that constitute creative potential. A re-analysis of 194 studies with more than 65,000 people showed very small gender differences on tests of creative thinking, and the differences that were identified favored women. Openness to experience is the personality trait most consistently predicting creativity. Again, there is no gender difference for the total score on personality tests measuring this trait.

In other words, there is no gender gap in individual capacity for creativity. But there is a gap in recognition and support for creativity. How does this happen?

Creativity Is Evaluated Through Unequal Social Judgment Processes

Recognition is based on judgment, and the judgments are inherently social and, therefore, subject to how we think of social groups. When people are asked to consider creativity as thinking outside the box, seeing the world differently, and breaking away from traditions, they describe key traits of creative individuals to be stereotypically masculine, such as being decisive, competitive, and self-reliant.

Researchers wondered whether these perceptions spill to judgments of real products. They showed a group of judges the same creative products —architectural designs and fashion designs—but one group was told they were created by a woman and another group was told they were created by a man. A male architect was judged as more creative, original, and thinking outside-the-box than a woman architect. The male advantage was not found for fashion designers, because the mental image of male fashion designers is not stereotypically masculine.

Another study examined how people describe talks on the TED.com platform. Viewers were allowed to select up to three from a set of 14 adjectives. Although all talks were selected by event curators based on creativity of the ideas they described, researchers found that viewers were less likely to label talks given by women as ingenious than talks by men. This was the case when researchers analyzed the top 100 talks regardless of their topic, as well as when they specifically looked at top talks within categories of technology, entertainment, business, science, and global issues.

The Rewards for Creative Behavior Differ for Men and Women

How creativity of men and women is perceived has consequences. Creativity can be a job requirement, and evaluations of creativity can thus influence performance evaluations.

In one study, researchers asked employees a series of questions about different ways they could be showing creativity and contributing to innovation in their jobs (e.g., do they initiate better ways of doing things, do they come up with creative solutions to work-related problems). Then, they asked supervisors to evaluate employee performance in different aspects of their work, from organizing and planning to communication, productivity, and quality of work.

Results showed that women were evaluated similarly whether they acted with creativity or not. Men, however, were rewarded with higher performance evaluations for acting more creatively.

Performance reviews matter. Researchers found a chain of one kind of evaluation influencing another, from first impressions to decisions with career-shaping influences. Judges read identical descriptions of either a male or female manager devising a strategic plan for their division. Then, they were asked to indicate the overall impression of the managers—how competitive, independent, ambitious, or confident they are. Next, judges indicated how creative and imaginative they thought the managers to be, and, finally, they rated how deserving they considered managers of a bonus, raise, and a promotion.

When the strategic plans were described as risky (taking a big chance and hoping for a high payoff), judges were more likely to evaluate male managers as having more agency, creativity, and ultimately being more deserving of reward.

What Is Valued Shapes What Is Developed

Men and women start with the same creative potential. Yet, because their potential and their actions are perceived and valued differently, the opportunities to act on their potential can start to diverge.

Three major influences on whether people realize their creative potential —creative self-efficacy, perceived importance of creativity, and support for creativity—are influenced by social judgments that favor men. Creative self-efficacy is a belief and confidence that we are able to be successful on tasks that call for creativity.

We tend to do what we believe we can do. Such confidence is developed through experience, and one important development path is based on opinions of others around us. When others expect us to be creative, we tend to see this as an expression of their trust in our abilities, and, in turn, our self-confidence grows.

We also tend to do that which we consider important for our goals. If women see that they are not rewarded for being creative in their jobs, they can reach a (reasonable and accurate) conclusion that creativity is not going to be important for their career advancement and discount its value.

And finally, creative potential is developed in a social environment and benefits from support. Yet, across industries, women get less support for creativity at work than men do. The more male-dominated the industry, greater support men receive. Gender of employees influences what support they get, and that in part shapes what they are able to accomplish at work.

When perception, evaluation, support, and rewards for creativity are not equal, equal potential is more likely to remain hidden or not realized. If we as a society are interested in developing and harnessing creative potential, we have to rethink how we see and judge creativity.

Abdulla Alabbasi, A. M., Thompson, T. L., Runco, M. A., Alansari, L. A., & Ayoub, A. E. A. (2025). Gender differences in creative potential: A meta-analysis of mean differences and variability. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 19(1), 87–100. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000506

Luksyte, A., Unsworth, K. L., & Avery, D. R. (2018). Innovative work behavior and sex-based stereotypes: Examining sex differences in perceptions and evaluations of innovative work behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 39(3), 292–305. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2219

Proudfoot, D., Kay, A. C., & Koval, C. Z. (2015). A gender bias in the attribution of creativity: Archival and experimental evidence for the perceived association between masculinity and creative thinking. Psychological Science, 26(11), 1751–1761. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615598739

Taylor, C. L. (2026). Gender bias in creativity: A process model for understanding the gender gap in creative achievement. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 21(1), 3-24. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916251360739

Taylor, C. L., Ivcevic, Z., Moeller, J., & Brackett, M. (2020). Gender and support for creativity at work. Creativity and Innovation Management, 29, 453–464. https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.12397

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