Do Women Prefer a Co-operative Work Environment?

Peter Kuhn and Marie Claire Villeval

No 5999, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Are women disproportionately attracted to work environments where cooperation rather than competition is rewarded? This paper reports the results of a real-effort experiment in which participants choose between an individual compensation scheme and a team-based payment scheme. We find that women are more likely than men to select team-based compensation in our baseline treatment, but women and men join teams with equal frequency when we add an efficiency advantage to team production. Using a simple structural discrete choice framework to reconcile these facts, we show that three elements can explain the observed patterns in the team-entry gender gap: (1) a gender gap in confidence in others (i.e. women are less pessimistic about their prospective teammates' relative ability), (2) a greater responsiveness among men to instrumental reasons for joining teams, and (3) a greater "pure" preference for working in a team environment among women.

Keywords: confidence; gender; self-selection; cooperation; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 J16 J24 J31 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2011-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - revised version published as 'Are Women More Attracted to Co-operation Than Men?' in: Economic Journal, 2014, 125, 115-140.

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Related works:
Working Paper: Do women prefer cooperative work environnement? (2012)
Working Paper: Do women prefer cooperative work environnement? (2012)
Working Paper: Do women prefer cooperative work environnement? (2012)
Working Paper: Do women prefer cooperative work environnement? (2012)
Working Paper: Do women prefer cooperative work environnement? (2012)
Working Paper: Do Women Prefer a Co-operative Work Environment? (2011)
Working Paper: Do Women Prefer a Co-operative Work Environment? (2011)
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