What is Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander? How gender-specific conceptual frames affect financial participation and decision-making

Cecilia Boggio (), Flavia Coda Moscarola () and Andrea Gallice
Additional contact information
Cecilia Boggio: University of Turin
Flavia Coda Moscarola: University of Turin

No 168, CeRP Working Papers from Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, Turin (Italy)

Abstract: The gender gap in financial participation and decision-making has been extensively documented in the economic and sociological literature. We conduct a field experiment with elementary school children to go to the roots of this gender gap. We compare the effects of two different treatments (the language treatment and the MdR treatment) designed to boost the attention span of the participants on a basic financial task aiming at eliciting their time preferences. We find that the use of gender-specific conceptual frames (competitiveness vs. cooperation) in the description of the task: 1) improves girls’ understanding of it and is effective in increasing the number of coherent answers; 2) makes the MdR workshop on the utility of savings more effective in improving the consistency of the answers of girls; 3) increases the children’s level of patience. This evidence supports the idea that a more gender-specific conceptual frame one women can identify more with - could play a role in narrowing the gender gap in financial market participation and decision-making.

Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gen
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cerp.carloalberto.org/good-goose-good-g ... and-decision-making/ (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crp:wpaper:168

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CeRP Working Papers from Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, Turin (Italy) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Silvia Maero ().