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Gender Differences in Competitiveness and Risk Taking: Comparing Children in Colombia and Sweden

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Author Info

  • Cárdenas, Juan-Camilo

    () (Unversidad de los Andes)

  • Dreber, Anna

    () (SIFR)

  • von Essen, Emma

    () (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm University)

  • Ranehill, Eva

    (Stockholm School of Economics)

Abstract

We explore gender differences in preferences for competition and risk among children aged 9-12 in Colombia and Sweden, two countries differing in gender equality according to macro indices. We include four types of tasks that vary in gender stereotyping when looking at competitiveness: running, skipping rope, math and word search. We find that boys and girls are equally competitive in all tasks and all measures in Colombia. Unlike the consistent results in Colombia, the results in Sweden are mixed, with some indication of girls being more competitive than boys in some tasks in terms of performance change, whereas boys are more likely to choose to compete in general. Boys in both countries are more risk taking than girls, with a smaller gender gap in Sweden.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Stockholm University, Department of Economics in its series Research Papers in Economics with number 2010:18.

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Length: 39 pages
Date of creation: 04 Nov 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hhs:sunrpe:2010_0018

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Postal: Department of Economics, Stockholm, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
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Web page: http://www.ne.su.se/
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Keywords: Competitiveness; risk preferences; children; gender differences; experiment;

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References

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  1. Alison L. Booth & Patrick Nolen, 2009. "Gender Differences in Risk Behaviour: Does Nurture Matter?," CEPR Discussion Papers 601, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
  2. Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Ranehill, Eva, 2009. "Outrunning the Gender Gap – Boys and Girls Compete Equally," SIFR Research Report Series 69, Institute for Financial Research.
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Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Cooperación y Competencia en los Niños: el papel de las habilidades no-cognitivas en la acumulación de capital humano y capital social desde las edades tempranas
    by Juan Camilo Cárdenas in Foco Económico on 2011-03-29 12:00:00
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Cited by:
  1. Nagore Iriberri & Pedro Rey-Biel, 2011. "Let's (not) talk about sex: The effect of information provision on gender differences in performance under competition," Economics Working Papers 1288, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
  2. Cárdenas, Juan-Camilo Cárdenas & Dreber, Anna Dreber & von Essen, Emma & Ranehill, Eva, 2011. "Gender and Cooperation in Children: Experiments in Colombia and Sweden," Research Papers in Economics 2011:15, Stockholm University, Department of Economics, revised 12 Jun 2012.
  3. Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Ranehill, Eva, 2011. "In Bloom: Gender Differences in Preferences among Adolescents," Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 734, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 27 Jun 2012.
  4. Kirsten Häger & Bastiaan Oud & Daniel Schunk, 2012. "Egalitarian Envy: Cross-cultural Variation in the Development of Envy in Children," Jena Economic Research Papers 2012-059, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Max-Planck-Institute of Economics.
  5. Nataliya Barasinska & Dorothea Schäfer, 2013. "Is the Willingness to Take Financial Risk a Sex-Linked Trait?: Evidence from National Surveys of Household Finance," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1278, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  6. Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Ranehill, Eva, 2009. "Outrunning the Gender Gap – Boys and Girls Compete Equally," Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 709, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 16 Oct 2009.
  7. Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Ranehill, Eva, 2011. "Gender and Competition in Adolescence: Task Matter," Research Papers in Economics 2011:14, Stockholm University, Department of Economics, revised 08 Mar 2013.

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