Do Gender Equality and Work-Life Balance Matter for Innovation Performance?

Abstract

Gender equality and work-life balance are highlighted in innovation research, as those are directly related to the work environment of R&D personnel. This study empirically explores how scientists' attitudes valuing gender equality and work-life balance affect their quantitative and qualitative research performance, in basic science. As a result, the more important scientists value gender equality, the better the qualitative performance. Also, scientists who believe that work-life balance is important, produce qualitatively superior research outcomes. However, in the case of quantitative performance, it was not affected by how much scientists value gender equality and work-life balance. This study is a novel attempt to analyse the effect of scientist's attitude which value gender equality and work-life balance on their research performance.