Let's (not) talk about sex: The effect of information provision on gender differences in performance under competition

Nagore Iriberri and Pedro Rey-Biel

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: We study how gender differences in performance under competition are affected by the provision of information regarding rival’s gender and/or differences in relative ability. In a laboratory experiment, we use two tasks that differ regarding perceptions about which gender outperforms the other. We observe women’s underperformance only under two conditions: 1) tasks are perceived as favoring men and 2) rivals’ gender is explicitly mentioned. This result can be explained by stereotype-threat being reinforced when explicitly mentioning gender in tasks in which women already consider they are inferior. Omitting information about gender is a safe alternative to avoid women’s underperformance in competition.

Keywords: gender differences; competition; feedback information; gender perception; stereotype-threat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-exp and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/1288.pdf Whole Paper (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Let's (Not) Talk about Sex: The Effect of Information Provision on Gender Differences in Performance under Competition (2015)
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:upf:upfgen:1288

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).