  Male-dominated contexts pose a dilemma: they increase the benefits of
repeated collaboration among women, yet at the same time, make such
collaborations less likely. This paper seeks to understand the conditions that
foster repeated collaboration among women versus men in male-dominated settings
by examining the critical role of status hierarchies. Using collaboration data
on 8,232,769 computer science research teams, we found that when a woman holds
the top-ranking position in a steep status hierarchy, other women on that team
are more likely than men to collaborate again, as compared to when the
hierarchy is flat, and compared to when men occupy the top-ranking position. In
steep hierarchies, top-ranking women but not top-ranking men foster conditions
in which junior women are more likely to collaborate again than junior men of
similar status levels. Our research suggests that whereas status hierarchies
are especially detrimental to repeated collaboration among underrepresented
individuals, top-ranking women in steep status hierarchies mitigate these
negative impacts between women in male-dominated settings.
