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Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field

Britta Hoyer, Thomas van Huizen Orcid Logo, Linda Keijzer, Sarah Rezaei, Stephanie Rosenkranz, Bastian Westbrock Orcid Logo

Labour Economics, Volume: 64, Start page: 101815

Swansea University Author: Bastian Westbrock Orcid Logo

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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...

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Published in: Labour Economics
ISSN: 0927-5371
Published: Elsevier BV 2020
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa68312
first_indexed 2024-11-25T14:21:50Z
last_indexed 2025-01-14T14:38:19Z
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spelling 2025-01-14T11:13:38.9353891 v2 68312 2024-11-21 Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field 40408e9de92daaa653357f6b40ed66fd 0000-0002-8303-0808 Bastian Westbrock Bastian Westbrock true false 2024-11-21 SOSS 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. Journal Article Labour Economics 64 101815 Elsevier BV 0927-5371 Gender gap; Competitiveness; Task difficulty 1 6 2020 2020-06-01 10.1016/j.labeco.2020.101815 COLLEGE NANME Social Sciences School COLLEGE CODE SOSS Swansea University Not Required 2025-01-14T11:13:38.9353891 2024-11-21T09:20:52.7090533 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Social Sciences - Economics Britta Hoyer 1 Thomas van Huizen 0000-0001-5486-2317 2 Linda Keijzer 3 Sarah Rezaei 4 Stephanie Rosenkranz 5 Bastian Westbrock 0000-0002-8303-0808 6
title Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field
spellingShingle Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field
Bastian Westbrock
title_short Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field
title_full Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field
title_fullStr Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field
title_full_unstemmed Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field
title_sort Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field
author_id_str_mv 40408e9de92daaa653357f6b40ed66fd
author_id_fullname_str_mv 40408e9de92daaa653357f6b40ed66fd_***_Bastian Westbrock
author Bastian Westbrock
author2 Britta Hoyer
Thomas van Huizen
Linda Keijzer
Sarah Rezaei
Stephanie Rosenkranz
Bastian Westbrock
format Journal article
container_title Labour Economics
container_volume 64
container_start_page 101815
publishDate 2020
institution Swansea University
issn 0927-5371
doi_str_mv 10.1016/j.labeco.2020.101815
publisher Elsevier BV
college_str Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchytype
hierarchy_top_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str School of Social Sciences - Economics{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Social Sciences - Economics
document_store_str 0
active_str 0
description 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.
published_date 2020-06-01T14:38:31Z
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score 11.047653

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