Journal article 52 views
Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field
Britta Hoyer,
Thomas van Huizen 
,
Linda Keijzer,
Sarah Rezaei,
Stephanie Rosenkranz,
Bastian Westbrock
,
Linda Keijzer,
Sarah Rezaei,
Stephanie Rosenkranz,
Bastian Westbrock
Labour Economics, Volume: 64, Start page: 101815
Swansea University Author:
Bastian Westbrock
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DOI (Published version): 10.1016/j.labeco.2020.101815
Abstract
This study examines the gender gap in competitiveness in an educational setting and tests whether this gap depends on the difficulty of the task at hand. For this purpose, we administered a series of experiments during the final exam of a university course. We confronted three cohorts of undergradua...
| Published in: | Labour Economics |
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| ISSN: | 0927-5371 |
| Published: |
Elsevier BV
2020
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| Online Access: |
Check full text
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa68312 |
| Abstract: |
This study examines the gender gap in competitiveness in an educational setting and tests whether this gap depends on the difficulty of the task at hand. For this purpose, we administered a series of experiments during the final exam of a university course. We confronted three cohorts of undergraduate students with a set of bonus questions and the choice between an absolute and a tournament grading scheme for these questions. To test the moderating impact of task difficulty, we (randomly) varied the difficulty of the questions between treatment groups. We find that, on average, women are significantly less likely to select the tournament scheme. However, the results show that the gender gap in tournament entry is sizable when the questions are relatively easy, but much smaller and statistically insignificant when the questions are difficult. |
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| Keywords: |
Gender gap; Competitiveness; Task difficulty |
| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Start Page: |
101815 |