Experience in the Same-Gender Environments and Low-Promotability Tasks

We investigate whether behavioral norms formed in same-gender environments persist when individuals later interact in mixed-gender groups, focusing on willingness to volunteer for low-promotability tasks (LPTs). Using a two-stage laboratory experiment that varies group gender composition over time, we find that initial exposure to same-gender groups generally reduces subsequent volunteering in mixed-gender settings. However, women who transition from same-gender to mixed-gender groups volunteer more than men, a pattern traditionally attributed to gendered social expectations. While prior literature attributes such gaps to gendered social expectations, our data challenge the universality of this mechanism. In our context, participants overwhelmingly assign the LPT to a male, rather than a female, peer in hypothetical supervisor scenarios, suggesting that expectation-based mechanisms do not drive the observed gender gap. We propose that women's higher volunteering instead reflects greater aversion to strategic uncertainty, which becomes more salient in mixed-gender environments. Consistent with this interpretation, women with single-sex schooling backgrounds, accustomed to more predictable peer environments, exhibit especially high volunteering rates in mixed-gender groups. These results indicate that same-gender experiences shape later LPT behavior and that women may volunteer for LPTs not only to comply with social norms but also to mitigate strategic uncertainty.