IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/nhheco/2022_020.html

Does Increasing Risk Widen Gender Gaps?

Author

Listed:
  • Hirshman, Samuel D.

    (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)

  • Willén, Alexander

    (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)

Abstract

We examine the response to an exogenous change in the risk profile of an important educational choice – requesting a regrade. We demonstrate how ostensibly gender-neutral policies can generate gaps across men and women because they differ in their perceptions of risk. Specifically, we show that an exogenous shift in the risk of requesting a regrade augmented the regrade request gap by nearly 100 percent. We show that this has consequential implications for students through its impact on their grade points. These findings reveal how gender differences identified in the lab manifest when men and women make real world decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Hirshman, Samuel D. & Willén, Alexander, 2022. "Does Increasing Risk Widen Gender Gaps?," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 20/2022, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2022_020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3036158
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeffrey A. Flory & Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2015. "Do Competitive Workplaces Deter Female Workers? A Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment on Job Entry Decisions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(1), pages 122-155.
    2. Heckman, James & Landersø, Rasmus, 2022. "Lessons for Americans from Denmark about inequality and social mobility," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    3. Uri Gneezy & Muriel Niederle & Aldo Rustichini, 2003. "Performance in Competitive Environments: Gender Differences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 1049-1074.
    4. Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2015. "Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations? Evidence from a Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(9), pages 2016-2024, September.
    5. Stephan Meier & Charles Sprenger, 2010. "Present-Biased Preferences and Credit Card Borrowing," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 193-210, January.
    6. Jonas Tungodden & Alexander Willén, 2023. "When Parents Decide: Gender Differences in Competitiveness," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(3), pages 751-801.
    7. Altonji, Joseph G. & Blank, Rebecca M., 1999. "Race and gender in the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 48, pages 3143-3259, Elsevier.
    8. Janet Currie, 2004. "The Take Up of Social Benefits," NBER Working Papers 10488, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Matthias Sutter & Martin G. Kocher & Daniela Glätzle-Rützler & Stefan T. Trautmann, 2013. "Impatience and Uncertainty: Experimental Decisions Predict Adolescents' Field Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(1), pages 510-531, February.
    10. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3143-3259 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. David Card & A. Abigail Payne, 2021. "High School Choices And The Gender Gap In Stem," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(1), pages 9-28, January.
    12. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    13. Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2007. "Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1067-1101.
    14. Anya Samek, 2019. "Gender Differences in Job Entry Decisions: A University-Wide Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(7), pages 3272-3281, July.
    15. Katherine Baldiga, 2014. "Gender Differences in Willingness to Guess," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(2), pages 434-448, February.
    16. J Aislinn Bohren & Peter Hull & Alex Imas, 2025. "Systemic Discrimination: Theory and Measurement," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 140(3), pages 1743-1799.
    17. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2001. "Boys will be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 261-292.
    18. Linda Babcock & Maria P. Recalde & Lise Vesterlund & Laurie Weingart, 2017. "Gender Differences in Accepting and Receiving Requests for Tasks with Low Promotability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(3), pages 714-747, March.
    19. Øivind A. Nilsen, 2020. "The labor market in Norway, 2000–2018," World of Labour, LISER, pages 424-424, June.
    20. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-474, June.
    21. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri, 2012. "Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 50-58.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carvajal, Daniel & Franco, Catalina & Isaksson, Siri, 2024. "Will Artificial Intelligence Get in the Way of Achieving Gender Equality?," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 3/2024, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics, revised 28 Apr 2025.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Boring, Anne & Brown, Jennifer, 2024. "Gender and choices in higher education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    2. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/1ta425q4ev9o6a76uep4hjlunc is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Ou, Kai & Pan, Xiaofei, 2021. "The effect of task choice and task assignment on the gender earnings gap: An experimental study," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    4. Buser, Thomas & van den Assem, Martijn J. & van Dolder, Dennie, 2023. "Gender and willingness to compete for high stakes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 350-370.
    5. Sharma, Karmini & Castagnetti, Alessandro, 2023. "Demand for information by gender: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 172-202.
    6. repec:hal:journl:hal-03383112 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Claussen, Jörg & Czibor, Eszter & van Praag, Mirjam C., 2015. "Women Do Not Play Their Aces: The Consequences of Shying Away," IZA Discussion Papers 9612, IZA Network @ LISER.
    8. Fang,Sheng & Goh,Chorching & Roberts,Mark & Xu,L. Colin & Zeufack,Albert G., 2020. "Female Business Leaders, Business and Cultural Environment, and Productivity around the World," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9275, The World Bank.
    9. Balafoutas, Loukas & Sutter, Matthias, 2019. "How uncertainty and ambiguity in tournaments affect gender differences in competitive behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 1-13.
    10. Benjamin Artz & Amanda H. Goodall & Andrew J. Oswald, 2018. "Do Women Ask?," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 611-636, October.
    11. Marianne Bertrand, 2018. "Coase Lecture – The Glass Ceiling," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 85(338), pages 205-231, April.
    12. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2016. "The Evolution of Gender Gaps in Industrialized Countries," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 405-434, October.
    13. Czibor, Eszter & Claussen, Jörg & van Praag, Mirjam, 2019. "Women in a men’s world: Risk taking in an online card game community," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 62-89.
    14. Eber, Nicolas & François, Abel & Weill, Laurent, 2021. "Gender, age, and attitude toward competition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 668-690.
    15. Thomas Buser & Leonie Gerhards & Joël J. van der Weele, 2016. "Measuring Responsiveness to Feedback as a Personal Trait," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-043/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    16. Bastani, Spencer & Giebe, Thomas & Guertler, Oliver, 2024. "Overconfidence and gender gaps in career outcomes: insights from a promotion signaling model," Working Paper Series 2024:21, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    17. Spencer Bastani & Thomas Giebe & Oliver Gürtler, 2023. "Overconfidence and Gender Equality in the Labor Market," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 220, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    18. Silvia Saccardo & Aniela Pietrasz & Uri Gneezy, 2018. "On the Size of the Gender Difference in Competitiveness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(4), pages 1541-1554, April.
    19. Sophie Clot & Marina Della Giusta & Giovanni Razzu, 2020. "Gender gaps in competition: new experimental evidence from UK," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2020-15, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    20. Bao, Zhengyang & Leibbrandt, Andreas, 2024. "Tournaments with safeguards: A blessing or a curse for women?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 292-306.
    21. Catherine Eckel & Lata Gangadharan & Philip J. Grossman & Nina Xue, 2021. "The gender leadership gap: insights from experiments," Chapters, in: Ananish Chaudhuri (ed.), A Research Agenda for Experimental Economics, chapter 7, pages 137-162, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    22. Hoyer, Britta & van Huizen, Thomas & Keijzer, Linda & Rezaei, Sarah & Rosenkranz, Stephanie & Westbrock, Bastian, 2020. "Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhs:nhheco:2022_020. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Synne Stormoen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sonhhno.html .

    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.