Competing now and then: The effects of delay on competitiveness across gender

Using an online real-effort experiment, we investigate whether and how delaying competition affects the individuals’ willingness to compete. Unlike our prior, we find that men and women are equally likely to compete in our baseline no-delay condition, with a task considered to be gender-neutral. We discuss how the gender gap in entry rates does not appear to be omnipresent, but instead depends on circumstances and beliefs. Men are significantly more likely than women to provisionally sign up for a delayed tournament when a future opportunity to study for the task is available; however, this difference in rates is evanescent, disappearing when the actual choice is made later. Women who have access to studying see an increase in performance, while men do not. Delaying competition by itself does not generate a gender gap in competitiveness. We explore a variety of potential reasons for why knowing one has access to studying produces the gender gap in tournament entry. We rule out differences in risk aversion, confidence, and task stereotypes. Control treatments where the delay itself is a choice rule out the possibility that the forced nature of delay may be at the root of the overly competitive initial decisions by the men. We conjecture that these patterns may arise due to men being more confident than women and making choices based on an overly ambitious view about future selves’ ability to study.