Science’s changing demographics raise new questions about research team diversity and research outcomes. We study mixed-gender research teams, examining 6.6 million papers published across the medical sciences since 2000 and establishing several core findings. First, the fraction of publications by mixed-gender teams has grown rapidly, yet mixed-gender teams continue to be underrepresented compared to the expectations of a null model. Second, despite their underrepresentation, the publications of mixed-gender teams are substantially more novel and impactful than the publications of same-gender teams of equivalent size. Third, the greater the gender balance on a team, the better the team scores on these performance measures. Fourth, these patterns generalize across medical subfields. Finally, the novelty and impact advantages seen with mixed-gender teams persist when considering numerous controls and potential related features, including fixed effects for the individual researchers, team structures, and network positioning, suggesting that a team’s gender balance is an underrecognized yet powerful correlate of novel and impactful scientific discoveries.

Research SummaryWe examine the effect of organizational status on employment‐related corporate social responsibility (CSR). As employees derive nonpecuniary benefits from both organizational status and employment‐related CSR, lower status firms may invest in nonpecuniary employment‐related CSR to compete in a status‐segmented labor market. We identify the effect using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) in the context of the Fortune 1000 rankings, as we contend that the 500th rank position marks an artificial breakpoint in status where quality follows a smooth distribution. We find that firms just failing to make the Fortune 500 perform significantly better in nonpecuniary employment‐related CSR. Our findings provide causal evidence for the labor market advantage of organizational status and a richer window into the strategic motivations behind CSR investments.Managerial SummaryWe examine one strategic investment that lower status firms make to compete in a status‐segmented labor market: employment‐based corporate social responsibility (CSR). We identify the effect using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) in the context of the Fortune 1000 rankings, as we argue that the 500th rank position creates a discontinuity in status at a precise location where quality differences can be assumed to follow a smooth distribution. We find that firms just failing to make it into the Fortune 500 perform significantly better in nonpecuniary employment‐related CSR as compared to firms just in the Fortune 500. The findings demonstrate that building a reputation for being socially responsible may offset differences in status and make a lower status organization more appealing to employees.