Gender differences in competitiveness: Friends matter

Lotte Kofoed Jørgensen, Marco Piovesan and Helene Willadsen

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2022, vol. 101, issue C

Abstract: We run an experiment with Danish school children (7-16 years old) to shed new light on gender differences in competitive behavior. Danish girls are not significantly less likely than boys to choose a competitive scheme when we control for individual performance, risk preferences, confidence, stereotypes, and interactions with the opposite gender. However, for the children who perform above average we find a gender gap of 11.8 percentage points. Our elicitation of the network of friends allows us to study the association between a child's and their friends’ competitiveness: for each (extra) friend that is competitive, girls choose to compete more often (+9.6 percentage points). The same is not true for boys. Finally, boys become better at making the correct decision with age, but girls avoid competition when they should choose it.

Keywords: Competition; Gender; Stereotypes; Children; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C91 J16 J24 J31 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:101:y:2022:i:c:s2214804322001264

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2022.101955

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