Gender Differences in Creativity

TLDR

Research on gender differences in creativity consistently finds no differences in test scores or self‑reported creativity, yet large disparities exist in creative achievements, indicating that existing theories are incomplete. The authors propose a new theoretical framework, the APT model of creativity, to better explain gender differences in creative outcomes. The APT model integrates known evidence and offers a structured approach to assess how innate and environmental factors interact to produce observed gender disparities in creativity.

Abstract

Abstract Research on gender differences in creativity, including creativity test scores, creative achievements, and self‐reported creativity is reviewed, as are theories that have been offered to explain such differences and available evidence that supports or refutes such theories. This is a difficult arena in which to conduct research, but there is a consistent lack of gender differences both in creativity test scores and in the creative accomplishments of boys and girls (which if anything tend to favor girls). As a result, it is difficult to show how innate gender differences in creativity could possibly explain later differences in creative accomplishment. At the same time, the large difference in the creative achievement of men and women in many fields make blanket environmental explanations inadequate, and the explanations that have been proposed thus far are at best incomplete. A new theoretical framework (the APT model of creativity) is proposed to allow better understanding of what is known about gender differences in creativity.