IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpm/docweb/1506.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gender differences: evidence from field tournaments

Author

Listed:
  • de Sousa, José
  • Hollard, Guillaume

Abstract

Women are under-represented in top positions, such as in business or in politics. Traditional explanations, like differences in productivity and discrimination, are now complemented by psychological explanations based on lab experiments. We provide the first attempt to assess the comparative importance of psychological and traditional explanations in a natural field experiment, namely chess competitions. Controlling for discrimination and productivity, we find that women are suffering a systematic handicap when playing against men. This "psychological" effect is further amplified through the tournament structure, preventing women from reaching top positions in the chess hierarchy. The effect is only marginally smaller when we consider the most experienced individuals or the most women-friendly countries.

Suggested Citation

  • de Sousa, José & Hollard, Guillaume, 2015. "Gender differences: evidence from field tournaments," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 1506, CEPREMAP.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpm:docweb:1506
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepremap.fr/depot/docweb/docweb1506.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marie-Pierre Dargnies, 2012. "Men Too Sometimes Shy Away from Competition: The Case of Team Competition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(11), pages 1982-2000, November.
    2. Jeffrey A. Flory & Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2015. "Do Competitive Workplaces Deter Female Workers? A Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment on Job Entry Decisions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(1), pages 122-155.
    3. Bertrand, Marianne, 2011. "New Perspectives on Gender," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 17, pages 1543-1590, Elsevier.
    4. Uri Gneezy & Muriel Niederle & Aldo Rustichini, 2003. "Performance in Competitive Environments: Gender Differences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 1049-1074.
    5. Uri Gneezy & Kenneth L. Leonard & John A. List, 2009. "Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence From a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(5), pages 1637-1664, September.
    6. Ghazala Azmat & Barbara Petrongolo, 2014. "Gender and the labour market: evidence from experiments," CentrePiece - The magazine for economic performance 425, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    7. Thomas Buser & Muriel Niederle & Hessel Oosterbeek, 2014. "Gender, Competitiveness, and Career Choices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(3), pages 1409-1447.
    8. Roland G. Fryer & Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2008. "Exploring the Impact of Financial Incentives on Stereotype Threat: Evidence from a Pilot Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 370-375, May.
    9. Roland G. Fryer & Steven D. Levitt, 2010. "An Empirical Analysis of the Gender Gap in Mathematics," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 210-240, April.
    10. Anna Dreber & Emma Essen & Eva Ranehill, 2011. "Outrunning the gender gap—boys and girls compete equally," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(4), pages 567-582, November.
    11. Altonji, Joseph G. & Blank, Rebecca M., 1999. "Race and gender in the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 48, pages 3143-3259, Elsevier.
    12. Jeffrey A. Flory & Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2010. "Do Competitive Work Places Deter Female Workers? A Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment on Gender Differences in Job-Entry Decisions," NBER Working Papers 16546, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Gerdes, Christer & Gränsmark, Patrik, 2010. "Strategic behavior across gender: A comparison of female and male expert chess players," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 766-775, October.
    14. Alan Manning & Farzad Saidi, 2010. "Understanding the Gender Pay Gap: What's Competition Got to Do with it?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 63(4), pages 681-698, July.
    15. Uri Gneezy & Aldo Rustichini, 2004. "Gender and Competition at a Young Age," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 377-381, May.
    16. Dreber, Anna & Gerdes, Christer & Gränsmark, Patrik, 2013. "Beauty queens and battling knights: Risk taking and attractiveness in chess," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 1-18.
    17. Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2007. "Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1067-1101.
    18. Marie-Pierre Dargnies, 2012. "Men Too Sometimes Shy Away from Competition : The Case of Team Competition," Post-Print hal-01492284, HAL.
    19. Victor Lavy, 2013. "Gender Differences in Market Competitiveness in a Real Workplace: Evidence from Performance‐based Pay Tournaments among Teachers," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(569), pages 540-573, June.
    20. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-474, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peter Backus & María Cubel & Matej Guid & Santiago Sánchez-Pages & Enrique Lopez Manas, 2016. "Gender, competition and performance:Evidence from real tournaments," Working Papers 2016/27, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    2. Boschini, Anne & Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Muren, Astri & Ranehill, Eva, 2019. "Gender, risk preferences and willingness to compete in a random sample of the Swedish population✰," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    3. Anna Katharina Pikos & Alexander Straub, 2020. "Mind the Absent Gap: Gender-Specific Competitive Behavior in Nonprofessional Sports," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(3), pages 215-233, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Azmat, Ghazala & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2014. "Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 32-40.
    2. Claussen, Jörg & Czibor, Eszter & van Praag, Mirjam C., 2015. "Women Do Not Play Their Aces: The Consequences of Shying Away," IZA Discussion Papers 9612, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. José De Sousa & Guillaume Hollard, 2023. "From Micro to Macro Gender Differences: Evidence from Field Tournaments," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(6), pages 3358-3399, June.
    4. Silvia Saccardo & Aniela Pietrasz & Uri Gneezy, 2018. "On the Size of the Gender Difference in Competitiveness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(4), pages 1541-1554, April.
    5. Anya Samek, 2019. "Gender Differences in Job Entry Decisions: A University-Wide Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(7), pages 3272-3281, July.
    6. José de Sousa & Guillaume Hollard, 2021. "From Micro to Macro Gender Differences: Evidence from Field Tournaments," Post-Print hal-03389151, HAL.
    7. Cornaglia, Francesca & Drouvelis, Michalis & Masella, Paolo, 2019. "Competition and the role of group identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 136-145.
    8. Balafoutas, Loukas & Sutter, Matthias, 2019. "How uncertainty and ambiguity in tournaments affect gender differences in competitive behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 1-13.
    9. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/5msrbb0rie9sjq3c4ejgb2v91o is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Boschini, Anne & Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Muren, Astri & Ranehill, Eva, 2019. "Gender, risk preferences and willingness to compete in a random sample of the Swedish population✰," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    11. Sophie Clot & Marina Della Giusta & Giovanni Razzu, 2020. "Gender gaps in competition: new experimental evidence from UK," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2020-15, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    12. Bao, Zhengyang & Leibbrandt, Andreas, 2024. "Tournaments with safeguards: A blessing or a curse for women?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 292-306.
    13. Josse Delfgaauw & Robert Dur & Joeri Sol & Willem Verbeke, 2013. "Tournament Incentives in the Field: Gender Differences in the Workplace," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 305-326.
    14. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5msrbb0rie9sjq3c4ejgb2v91o is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Anna Dreber & Emma Essen & Eva Ranehill, 2014. "Gender and competition in adolescence: task matters," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(1), pages 154-172, March.
    16. De Paola, Maria & Gioia, Francesca & Scoppa, Vincenzo, 2015. "Are females scared of competing with males? Results from a field experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 117-128.
    17. Pedro Bordalo & Katherine Coffman & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2016. "Stereotypes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1753-1794.
      • Pedro Bordalo & Katherine Coffman & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, "undated". "Stereotypes," Working Paper 373306, Harvard University OpenScholar.
      • Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2014. "Stereotypes," NBER Working Papers 20106, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Pedro Bordalo & Katherine Coffman & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, "undated". "Stereotypes," Working Paper 467407, Harvard University OpenScholar.
      • Pedro Bordalo & Katherine Coffman & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2014. "Stereotypes," Working Paper 200246, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    18. Ingvild Almås & Alexander W. Cappelen & Kjell G. Salvanes & Erik Ø. Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2016. "Willingness to Compete: Family Matters," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(8), pages 2149-2162, August.
    19. Matthias Sutter & Daniela Glätzle-Rützler, 2015. "Gender Differences in the Willingness to Compete Emerge Early in Life and Persist," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(10), pages 2339-23354, October.
    20. Muriel Niederle, 2014. "Gender," NBER Working Papers 20788, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Louis-Philippe Morin, 2015. "Do Men and Women Respond Differently to Competition? Evidence from a Major Education Reform," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(2), pages 443-491.
    22. Flory, Jeffrey A. & Gneezy, Uri & Leonard, Kenneth L. & List, John A., 2018. "Gender, age, and competition: A disappearing gap?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 256-276.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    labor mobility; labor search; wage discrimination;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpm:docweb:1506. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mathieu Perona (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceprefr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.