Gender in Committees

Martin Dufwenberg and Astri Muren ()

No 2003:6, Research Papers in Economics from Stockholm University, Department of Economics

Abstract: How does a group’s gender composition influence its decisions? Economists have found women to be more generous and egalitarian than men, so one might expect groups with more women to be more generous/egalitarian. Group polarization, whereby discussions amplify preexisting attitudes (a phenomenon well-established in psychology), would enhance that effect. We report experimental evidence. Femalemajority groups are more generous/egalitarian than male-majority groups,ut female unisex groups are not the most generous/egalitarian. We discuss how these findings accord with our derived conjectures, and what can be learned regarding the influence of gender composition on committee decision-making more generally.

Keywords: gender; groups; generosity; group polarization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C92 D63 D64 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2003-06-07
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:sunrpe:2003_0006

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