Are women less effective leaders than men? Evidence from experiments using coordination games

Lea Heursen, Eva Ranehill and Roberto Weber

No 368, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: We study whether one reason behind female underrepresentation in leadership is that female leaders are less effective at coordinating action by followers. Two experiments using coordination games investigate whether female leaders are less successful than males in persuading followers to coordinate on efficient equilibria. Group performance hinges on higher-order beliefs about the leader’s capacity to convince followers to pursue desired actions, making beliefs that women are less effective leaders potentially self-confirming. We find no evidence that such bias impacts actual leadership performance, identifying a precisely-estimated null effect. We show that this absence of an effect is surprising given experts’ priors.

Keywords: Gender; coordination games; leadership; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 D23 J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Are Women Less Effective Leaders than Men? Evidence from Experiments Using Coordination Games (2023)
Working Paper: Are Women Less Effective Leaders Than Men? Evidence from Experiments Using Coordination Games (2020)
Working Paper: Are women less effective leaders than men? Evidence from experiments using coordination games (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:368

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