Emirati women do not shy away from competition: Evidence from a patriarchal society in transition

Aurelie Dariel, Curtis Kephart, Nikos Nikiforakis () and Christina Zenker

No 20170011, Working Papers from New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science

Abstract: We explore gender attitudes towards competition in the United Arab Emirates – a traditionally patriarchal society which in recent times has adopted numerous policies to empower women and promote their role in the labor force. The experimental treatments vary whether individuals compete in single-sex or mixed-sex groups. In contrast to previous studies, women in our sample are not less willing to compete than men. In fact, once we control for individual performance, Emirati women are more likely to select into competition. Our analysis shows that neither women nor men shy away from competition, and both compete more than what would be optimal in monetary terms as the fraction of men in their group increases. We offer a detailed survey of the literature and discuss possible reasons for the lack of gender differences in our experiment.

Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2017-11, Revised 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-exp and nep-gen
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

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Journal Article: Emirati women do not shy away from competition: evidence from a patriarchal society in transition (2017)
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