Preferences or Confounders? Persistent Gender Gap in Competition Across Four Continents

The gender gap in willingness to compete is thought to underlie enduring inequalities in education, career choice, and labor market outcomes. Yet it remains unclear whether the gap reflects true preference differences or results from confounding factors such as task stereotypes, overconfidence, or risk aversion. We test gender differences in competition entry across eight pre-registered studies in seven countries spanning four continents (Dominican Republic, Ivory Coast, El Salvador, Madagascar, Spain, The Philippines, and Uruguay; total n = 1,833), using an experimental design that systematically minimizes these confounds: (i) based on a non-male-stereotyped task (the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test); (ii) matching participants with an opponent of identical baseline, piece-rate performance to remove strategic uncertainty and the role of beliefs; and (iii) reducing the riskiness of competition. Despite these features—and no consistent gender gap in performance—we find that women enter competition significantly less than men (meta-analytic difference = 6–7 %), with no cross-country heterogeneity. Overconfidence is higher among men and predicts competition entry, but it does not explain the gender gap. Risk preferences play no role. Thus, in a setting designed to equalize opportunity and eliminate known drivers of the gap, gender differences in competition persist. This suggests that a residual preference for competition difference may contribute to gender disparities in high-stakes economic environments across cultures.