Keywords

Field experiment, Gender gap, Leadership, Competition, Competition aversion

Abstract

Women's underrepresentation in leadership positions has been well documented, but the reasons behind it are not well understood. We carry out a field experiment to test a prominent theory about the source of the gender gap in leadership ambition: women's higher aversion to competitive environments. Using politics as a context for our study, we employ two distinct subject pools – highly politically active individuals and workers from an online labor market. We find that priming individuals to consider the competitive nature of politics has a strong negative effect on women's interest in political office, but not on men's interest, hence significantly increasing the gender gap in leadership ambition.

Original Publication Citation

Why women dont run: Experimental evidence on gender differences in competition aversion” (withJessica Preece).Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 117: 296-308, 2015.