The gender leadership gap in competitive and cooperative institutions

Catherine Eckel, Lata Gangadharan (), Philip Grossman, Miranda Lambert () and Nina Xue ()
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Miranda Lambert: Texas A&M University
Nina Xue: Monash University

No 2024-10, Monash Economics Working Papers from Monash University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We investigate how the institutional setting impacts the gender leadership gap, motivated by the notion that women prefer cooperative over competitive environments. An experiment tests leaders’ ability to foster cooperation under competitive ("winner takes all") versus cooperative (equal earnings distribution) incentive schemes. All leaders enhance efficiency similarly, but a gender gap emerges under the competitive context where women receive lower evaluations for identical advice. This bias disappears in the cooperative context, where women leaders are evaluated 50% higher, suggesting the congruence of the environment with stereotypes has important policy implications. Men are more willing to lead, regardless of context.

Keywords: gender; leadership; institutional environment; performance evaluation; lab-experiment; behavioral economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 J16 J71 M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gen, nep-gth and nep-lab
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