 How social structure shapes female competition throughout her lifetimeJeffrey Flory, Kenneth L. Leonard, Magda Tsaneva and Kathryn Vasilaky Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, vol. 216, issue C, 433-456 Abstract: Many studies find a consistent gender gap in competitiveness where men are more likely to compete than women given the same level of ability. Using data from experiments with women ages 12 through 90 in matrilocal and patrilocal communities in rural Malawi, we show that this gender gap does not exist uniformly for all women nor across their whole lifetime. We first replicate three main findings from the gender and competition literature: (i) women are less likely to compete on average; and the gender gap differs by (ii) culture and by (iii) age. In a new finding, we show that the gender gap changes in a theoretically-predicted manner with motherhood status. We argue that these results, when combined, point to an overarching theory of gender and competition–one that is driven by environmental constraints that vary with age, fertility, and social structure. Keywords: Gender; Competition; Culture; Socialization; Age (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:216:y:2023:i:c:p:433-456 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.10.023 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D. More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier |
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