Competitive Pressure Widens the Gender Gap in Performance: Evidence from a Two-stage Competition in Mathematics

Nagore Iriberri and Pedro Rey-Biel

The Economic Journal, 2019, vol. 129, issue 620, 1863-1893

Abstract: In two-stage elimination math contests, participants from four different age groups compete to pass from stage 1 to stage 2 and later to be among the winners. Although female participants have higher maths grades at school the gender gap reverses in the two stages of the contests. More importantly, following the same individual participant across different stages, we find that the gender gap in performance increases from stage 1 to stage 2. The increase in female underperformance is attributed to higher competitive pressure and alternative explanations based on selection, discrimination and differences in reaction to increasing difficulty are ruled out.

Date: 2019
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Working Paper: Competitive Pressure Widens the Gender Gap in Performance: Evidence from a Two-Stage Competition in Mathematics (2016)
Working Paper: Competitive Pressure Widens the Gender Gap in Performance: Evidence from a Two-Stage Competition in Mathematics (2016)
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