Gender Differences in Competitiveness: Experimental Evidence from China

Abstract

Experimental evidence from both the lab and the field shows that women on average have a lower propensity to enter a competitive environment. In this paper, we investigate gender differences in competitiveness using a lab-in-the-field experiment and a subject pool consisting of Chinese adults. China provides an interesting environment to study in this regard since the country has promoted gender equality for a long time and the gender gap in earnings is small in a cross-country comparison. However, in many respects, China is still a patriarchal society. Our experimental results show that women perform equally well as men in a piece-rate task and significantly better in a competitive payment environment. Despite this, men are more than twice as likely to voluntarily choose a competitive environment. This gender difference cannot be explained by differences in risk preferences or overconfidence.