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

Nagore Iriberri and Pedro Rey-Biel

No 879, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: In a two-stage elimination math contest participants aged from 10 to 16 compete to pass from stage 1 to stage 2 and later to be among the winners. Although female participants have higher Math grades at school the gender gap reverses in the two stages of the math contest. More importantly, using the set of participants who take part in both stages, we find that the gender gap in performance increases from stage 1 to stage 2 of the competition. The increase in female underperformance is attributed to higher competitive pressure and alternative explanations based on discrimination and differences in reaction to increasing difficulty are ruled out.

Keywords: education; competition; Gender Gap; glass-ceiling effect; mathematics; field data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 J16 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-02
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Competitive Pressure Widens the Gender Gap in Performance: Evidence from a Two-stage Competition in Mathematics (2019)
Working Paper: Competitive Pressure Widens the Gender Gap in Performance: Evidence from a Two-Stage Competition in Mathematics (2016)
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