Competitiveness at the intersection of gender and sexual orientation

Abstract

We study the relationship between sexual orientation, gender, and competitiveness in the United States using an online experiment. We document a novel sexual minority gap in willingness to compete, wherein gay and lesbian individuals compete less than their heterosexual counterparts. Furthermore, we find that the well-documented gender gap in competitiveness does not depend on sexual orientation: both lesbian and heterosexual women compete less than their male counterparts. Differences in competitiveness are mostly explained by differences in self-confidence, with the exception of the gender gap between lesbian and gay participants. Additionally, we study the consequences of inferring sexual orientation through associated indicators. We find that inference based on sexual attraction produces estimates similar to our main analysis based on identity; inference using sexual experience does not. Our findings highlight how the increased availability of self-reported identity data can provide new economic insights into these historically understudied populations.