Outrunning the Gender Gap – Boys and Girls Compete Equally

Anna Dreber (), Emma von Essen () and Eva Ranehill ()

No 709, Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance from Stockholm School of Economics

Abstract: Recent studies find that women are less competitive than men. This gender difference in competitiveness has been suggested as one possible explanation for why men occupy the majority of top positions in many sectors. In this study we explore competitiveness in children, with the premise that both culture and gendered stereotypes regarding the task at hand may influence competitive behavior. A related field experiment on Israeli children shows that only boys react to competition by running faster when competing in a race. We here test if there is a gender gap in running among 7-10 year old Swedish children. We also introduce two female sports, skipping rope and dancing, to see if competitiveness is task dependent. We find no gender difference in reaction to competition in any task; boys and girls compete equally. If gender equality matters for competitiveness, this result may be explained by cultural factors, since Sweden scores higher on gender equality indices than Israel.

Keywords: competitiveness; gender differences; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D03 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-lab and nep-spo
Date: 2009-01-29, Revised 2011-03-25
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (27) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://swopec.hhs.se/hastef/papers/hastef0709.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Outrunning the gender gap—boys and girls compete equally (2011)
Working Paper: Outrunning the Gender Gap – Boys and Girls Compete Equally (2011)
Working Paper: Outrunning the Gender Gap – Boys and Girls Compete Equally (2009)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:hastef:0709

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance from Stockholm School of Economics
Address: The Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Helena Lundin ().