Gender differences: evidence from field tournaments

José De Sousa () and Guillaume Hollard

No 1506, CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) from CEPREMAP

Abstract: Women are under-represented in top positions, such as in business or in politics. Traditional explanations, like differences in productivity and discrimination, are now complemented by psychological explanations based on lab experiments. We provide the first attempt to assess the comparative importance of psychological and traditional explanations in a natural field experiment, namely chess competitions. Controlling for discrimination and productivity, we find that women are suffering a systematic handicap when playing against men. This "psychological" effect is further amplified through the tournament structure, preventing women from reaching top positions in the chess hierarchy. The effect is only marginally smaller when we consider the most experienced individuals or the most women-friendly countries.

Keywords: labor mobility; labor search; wage discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpm:docweb:1506

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