Gender gaps in competition: new experimental evidence from UK

Sophie Clot (), Marina Della Giusta () and Giovanni Razzu ()
Additional contact information
Sophie Clot: Department of Economics, University of Reading
Giovanni Razzu: Department of Economics, University of Reading

No em-dp2020-15, Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Reading

Abstract: We use a controlled experiment widely adopted in the literature to assess the extent of gender differences in attitudes towards competition in a sample of UK professionals working in two different companies. We find no gender differences in attitudes towards competition nor in performance under a competitive reward scheme. This results qualifies the findings of a large number of experimental studies that show that women are more likely than men to shy away from competition. We also find that, in our sample of professionals, women’s performance under competitive schemes does not decline. We conclude that it is important to avoid generalisations on the presence of gender gaps in attitudes towards competition. This being the first field study with professional workers in relatively competitive sectors, we think more needs to be carried out.

Keywords: Gender; competition; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J16 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2020-06-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-exp and nep-gen
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.reading.ac.uk/web/FILES/economics/emdp202015.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:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2020-15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Reading Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alexander Mihailov ().