Task Difficulty and Gender Differences in Competitiveness: Evidence From Botswana

Michalis Drouvelis and Graeme Pearce

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2025, vol. 87, issue 4, 735-750

Abstract: Using a novel subject pool from Botswana, we experimentally examine the impact of task difficulty on willingness to compete, an economic indicator that may partially explain gender disparities in the labour market. Our experiment closely follows the paradigm of Niederle and Vesterlund (2007, QJE) and is concerned with treatments where a task is either relatively easy or more difficult. We report evidence of a larger gender gap in willingness to compete when the math task is easy in comparison to when the math task is more difficult. Our results have implications for future experiments examining gender differences.

Date: 2025
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