Outrunning the gender gap—boys and girls compete equally

By Anna Dreber, Emma von Essen, Eva Ranehill. 2011

171 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent studies find that women are less competitive than men. This gender difference in competitiveness has been suggested as one possible explanation for why men occupy the majority of top positions in many sectors. In this study we explore competitiveness in children, with the premise that both context and gendered stereotypes regarding the task at hand may influence competitive behavior. A related field experiment on Israeli children shows that only boys react to competition by running faster when competing in a race. We here test if there is a gender gap in running among 7–10 year old Swedish children. We also introduce two female sports, skipping rope and dancing, to see if competitiveness is task dependent. We find no gender difference in reaction to competition in any task; boys and girls compete equally. Studies in different environments with different types of tasks are thus important in order to make generalizable claims about gender differences in competitiveness.

Subfields: Gender Studies

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/657b6281d28341465f6cae50cb8451c5baedb190

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In Gender Studies

Citations in the corpus

Gender and competition in adolescence: task matters (2013, result): “Contrary to the results suggested by studies on adults, tasks do not appear to matter neither for Swedish children aged 9–10 (Dreber et al. 2011), nor for Colombian and Swedish children aged 9–12 (Cárdenas et al. 2012).”
Behavioral Economics of Education (2015, background): “Dreber et al. (2011) nd no gender difference in the performance in reaction to competition for school children aged 7–10 for tasks such as running, skipping rope and dancing, hile Sutter and Rützler (2010) find a gender gap in the willingness to compete already at the age of 3 for the task of…”
Gender and Competition (2011, background): “Whereas Gneezy & Rustichini (2004) find a significant gender gap in competitive performance among 10-year-old Israeli children, Dreber et al. (2011) find no 624 Niederle Vesterlund A nn u.”
Evidence on Self-Stereotyping and the Contribution of Ideas (2014, result): “…our results are consistent with emerging evidence from the gender and competition literature: Grosse and Riender (2010), Kamas and Preston (2010), Dreber, Essen, and Ranehill (2011) and Shurchkov (2012) show that the well-documented gender gap in competitiveness (as first documented by Gneezy,…”
GENDER MATCHING AND COMPETITIVENESS: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE (2013, unknown): “The cultural explanation is also supported by Dreber et al. (2009) who cannot replicate the gender gap in competitiveness with children in Sweden, possibly because this society is more egalitarian than others, and”
Gender, Competitiveness, and Socialization at a Young Age: Evidence From a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society (2013, background): “Dreber, Essen, and Ranehill (2011) find that 7- to 10- year-old boys and girls in Sweden have similar reactions in terms of performance to competition in running, skipping rope and dancing tasks.”