The Gender Gap in Competitiveness: Women Shy away from Competing with Others, but Not from Competing with Themselves

Johanna Mollerstrom and Katharina Wrohlich

DIW Economic Bulletin, 2017, vol. 7, issue 22/23, 219-225

Abstract: Women are less willing than men to compete against others. This gender gap can partially explain the differences between women’s and men’s education and career choices, and the labor market disparities that result. The experiments presented here show that even though women are less willing than men to compete against others, they are just as willing as men are to take on the challenge of improving themselves and competing against their own past performance. For organizations striving towards gender equality, this opens up new possibilities for institutionalizing competitive pressure.

Keywords: gender; competition; discrimination; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 C91 J16 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwdeb:2017-22-1

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