Gender Differences in Competitiveness and Risk Taking: Comparing Children in Colombia and Sweden

@article{Cardenas2010GenderDI,
  title={Gender Differences in Competitiveness and Risk Taking: Comparing Children in Colombia and Sweden},
  author={Juan-Camilo Cardenas and Anna Dreber and Emma von Essen and Eva Ranehill},
  journal={ERN: Behavioral Economics (Topic)},
  year={2010}
}
We explore gender differences in preferences for competition and risk among children aged 9-12 in Colombia and Sweden, two countries differing in gender equality according to macro indices. We include four types of tasks that vary in gender stereotyping when looking at competitiveness: running, skipping rope, math and word search. We find that boys and girls are equally competitive in all tasks and all measures in Colombia. Unlike the consistent results in Colombia, the results in Sweden are… 
View on SSRN
swopec.hhs.se
193 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
17
Background Citations
87
Methods Citations
9
Results Citations
15

193 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Outrunning the Gender Gap - Boys and Girls Compete Equally
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 Bloom: Gender Differences in Preferences Among Adolescents
We look at gender differences among adolescents in Sweden in preferences for altruism, risk and competition. We find that girls are more altruistic and less risk taking than boys. No gender…
Gender and competition in adolescence: task matters
We look at gender differences among adolescents in Sweden in preferences for competition, altruism and risk. For competitiveness, we explore two different tasks that differ in associated stereotypes.…
Gender and Preferences at a Young Age: Evidence from Armenia
We look at gender differences in competitiveness, risk preferences and altruism in a large sample of children and adolescents aged 7–16 in Armenia. Post-Soviet Armenia has few formal barriers to…
Understanding unequal outcomes : Studies on gender, social status and foreignness
In economics there are two main domains of explanation for understanding unequal outcomes. The first considers differences in individual preferences, while the second concerns differences in how…
Gender Differences in Competitiveness and Risk-Taking Among Children, Teenagers, and College Students: Evidence from Jeopardy!
Studying competitiveness and risk-taking among Jeopardy! contestants in the US, this paper analyzes whether and how gender differences emerge with age and by gender of opponent. Our samples contain…
Gender and Cooperation in Children: Experiments in Colombia and Sweden
TLDR
There is no robust evidence of a difference in cooperation between Colombia and Sweden overall, however, Colombian girls cooperate less than Swedish girls and indications that girls in Colombia are less cooperative than boys.
Gender Differences in Performance and Risk-taking among Children, Teenagers, and College Students: Evidence from Jeopardy!
Abstract Studying Jeopardy! contestants in the US, we explore whether and when gender differences in performance in competitive settings and risk-taking emerge with age and by opponents’ gender. We…
Gender, Competitiveness and Career Choices
Gender differences in competitiveness are often discussed as a potential explanation for gender differences in education and labor market outcomes. We correlate an incentivized measure of…
Gender differences in competitiveness
Differences in labor market outcomes for women and men are highly persistent. Apart from discrimination, one frequently mentioned explanation could be differences in the attitude towards competition…
...
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 33 REFERENCES
Outrunning the Gender Gap - Boys and Girls Compete Equally
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…
Gender and competition at a young age
Gender gaps may be observed in a variety of economic and social environments. One of the possible determining factors is that men are more competitive than women and so, when the competitiveness of…
Gender Differences in Competition Emerge Early in Life
We study gender differences in the willingness to compete in a large-scale experiment with 1,035 children and teenagers, aged three to eighteen years. Using an easy math task for children older than…
Choosing to Compete: How Different are Girls and Boys?
Gender Differences in Risk Behaviour: Does Nurture Matter?
Women and men may differ in their propensity to choose a risky outcome because of innate preferences or because pressure to conform to gender-stereotypes encourages girls and boys to modify their…
Explaining Gender Differences in Competitiveness: Gender-Task Stereotypes
Gender-specific patterns of self-selection into competitive and cooperative environments may have multiple reasons. One of the most prominent explanations to this point is, that there are inherent…
Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society
This study uses a controlled experiment to explore whether there are gender differences in selecting into competitive environments across two distinct societies: the Maasai in Tanzania and the Khasi…
Gender Differences in Seeking Challenges: The Role of Institutions
We examine whether women and men of the same ability differ in their decisions to seek challenges. In the laboratory, we create an environment in which we can measure a participants performance level…
Gender Differences in Preferences
This paper reviews the literature on gender differences in economic experiments. In the three main sections, we identify robust differences in risk preferences, social (other-regarding) preferences,…
Choices About Competition: Differences by Gender and Hormonal Fluctuations, and the Role of Relative Performance Feedback
Economic experiments have shown that when given the choice between piece-rate and winner-take-all tournament style compensation, women are more reluctant than men to choose tournaments. These gender…
...
...