IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/anr/reveco/v3y2011p601-630.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender and Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Muriel Niederle

    (Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
    NBER, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138)

  • Lise Vesterlund

    (NBER, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
    Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260)

Abstract

Laboratory studies have documented that women often respond less favorably to competition than men. Conditional on performance, men are often more eager to compete, and the performance of men tends to respond more positively to an increase in competition. This means that few women enter and win competitions. We review studies that examine the robustness of these differences as well the factors that may give rise to them. Both laboratory and field studies largely confirm these initial findings, showing that gender differences in competitiveness tend to result from differences in overconfidence and in attitudes toward competition. Gender differences in risk aversion, however, seem to play a smaller and less robust role. We conclude by asking what could and should be done to encourage qualified males and females to compete.

Suggested Citation

  • Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2011. "Gender and Competition," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 601-630, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:anr:reveco:v:3:y:2011:p:601-630
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-economics-111809-125122
    Download Restriction: Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    experiments; labor economics; economics of education; overconfidence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:anr:reveco:v:3:y:2011:p:601-630. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: http://www.annualreviews.org (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.annualreviews.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.