• DOI:10.1111/j.1468-0297.2011.02480.x
• Corpus ID: 73518665

Gender Differences in Risk Behaviour: Does Nurture Matter?

@article{Booth2009GenderDI,
  title={Gender Differences in Risk Behaviour: Does Nurture Matter?},
  author={Alison Booth and Patrick James Nolen},
  journal={Wiley-Blackwell: Economic Journal},
  year={2009}
}

• A. Booth, P. Nolen
• Published 1 March 2009
• Economics, Psychology
• Wiley-Blackwell: Economic Journal

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 innate preferences. Single-sex environments are likely to modify students' risk-taking preferences in economically important ways. To test this, we designed a controlled experiment in which subjects were given an opportunity to choose a risky outcome - a real-stakes gamble with a higher expected monetary value than the alternative outcome with a certain payoff - and in which the sensitivity of observed risk choices to environmental factors could be explored. The results of our real-stakes gamble show that gender differences in preferences for risk-taking are indeed sensitive to whether the girl attends a single-sex or coed school. Girls from single-sex schools are as likely to choose the real-stakes gamble as much as boys from either coed or single sex schools, and more likely than coed girls. Moreover, gender differences in preferences for risk-taking are sensitive to the gender mix of the experimental group, with girls being more likely to choose risky outcomes when assigned to all-girl groups. This suggests that observed gender differences in behaviour under uncertainty found in previous studies might reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.