Understanding Gender Differences in Leadership

Sule Alan, Seda Ertac (), Elif Kubilay and Gyongyi Loranth
Additional contact information
Seda Ertac: Koc University
Elif Kubilay: Bocconi University
Gyongyi Loranth: University of Virginia

No 2016-024, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: We study the evolution of gender differences in the willingness to assume the decision-maker role in a group, which is a major component of leadership. Using data from a large-scale field experiment, we show that while there is no gender difference in the willingness to make risky decisions on behalf of a group in a sample of children, a large gap emerges in a sample of adolescents. In particular, the proportion of girls who exhibit leadership willingness drops by 39% going from childhood to adolescence. We explore the possible causes of this drop and find that a significant part of it can be explained by a dramatic decline in "social confidence," measured by the willingness to perform a real effort task in public. We show that it is possible to capture the observed link between public performance and leadership by estimating a structural model that incorporates costs related to social concerns. These findings are important in addressing the lower propensity of females to self-select into high-level positions, which are typically subject to greater public scrutiny.

Keywords: leadership; gender; risk taking; social confidence; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D03 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gen, nep-hrm and nep-soc
Note: IP
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Alan_E ... _2016_leadership.pdf First version, October 2016 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Understanding Gender Differences in Leadership (2020)
Working Paper: Understanding Gender Differences in Leadership (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2016-024

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