{"title":"Women don't avoid competition, they avoid competing against men: Experimental evidence from Kenya","authors":"Maliheh Paryavi, Francisco Campos, Indhira Santos","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2025.102353","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines gender differences in competitive behavior in Kenya using a series of laboratory experiments. The control condition was designed to assess the baseline competitive behavior in a mixed-gender competitive environment in a stereotypical male domain. To further understand the role of mixed-gender competitive environment on women's competition behavior, the control condition was replicated with women facing only other women as competitors. The paper also examines gender differences in competition in a high-stakes environment, where the control condition was replicated, but financial stakes were increased by a factor of ten. The study finds significant differences in competition entry between men and women in both the control and high-stakes conditions. These are largely driven by gender differences in preferences for competing in the control condition, and differences in risk and feedback aversion when the stakes are high. Women in the women-only treatment were significantly more competitive than women in the control condition and just as competitive as men in the control condition. Our findings suggest that women do not avoid competition; they avoid competing against men.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":"116 ","pages":"Article 102353"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804325000205","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This study examines gender differences in competitive behavior in Kenya using a series of laboratory experiments. The control condition was designed to assess the baseline competitive behavior in a mixed-gender competitive environment in a stereotypical male domain. To further understand the role of mixed-gender competitive environment on women's competition behavior, the control condition was replicated with women facing only other women as competitors. The paper also examines gender differences in competition in a high-stakes environment, where the control condition was replicated, but financial stakes were increased by a factor of ten. The study finds significant differences in competition entry between men and women in both the control and high-stakes conditions. These are largely driven by gender differences in preferences for competing in the control condition, and differences in risk and feedback aversion when the stakes are high. Women in the women-only treatment were significantly more competitive than women in the control condition and just as competitive as men in the control condition. Our findings suggest that women do not avoid competition; they avoid competing against men.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly the Journal of Socio-Economics) welcomes submissions that deal with various economic topics but also involve issues that are related to other social sciences, especially psychology, or use experimental methods of inquiry. Thus, contributions in behavioral economics, experimental economics, economic psychology, and judgment and decision making are especially welcome. The journal is open to different research methodologies, as long as they are relevant to the topic and employed rigorously. Possible methodologies include, for example, experiments, surveys, empirical work, theoretical models, meta-analyses, case studies, and simulation-based analyses. Literature reviews that integrate findings from many studies are also welcome, but they should synthesize the literature in a useful manner and provide substantial contribution beyond what the reader could get by simply reading the abstracts of the cited papers. In empirical work, it is important that the results are not only statistically significant but also economically significant. A high contribution-to-length ratio is expected from published articles and therefore papers should not be unnecessarily long, and short articles are welcome. Articles should be written in a manner that is intelligible to our generalist readership. Book reviews are generally solicited but occasionally unsolicited reviews will also be published. Contact the Book Review Editor for related inquiries.