From Micro to Macro Gender Differences: Evidence from Field Tournaments

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sousa, Jose De; Hollard, Guillaume
• 署名单位: Universite Paris Saclay; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ecole Polytechnique; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ecole Polytechnique
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2022.4541
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 3358-3399
• 关键词: gender; competitiveness; ECONOMICS; behavior and behavioral decision making

摘要

We document that women compete worse against men in field tournaments in over 150 countries and across all ages. Our field setting is the game of chess and we benefit from a large and rich data set to investigate the robustness and heterogeneity of our uncovered gender differences in competition. We find a macro gender gap in every country: there are fewer female than male players, especially at the top, and women have lower average rankings. Moreover, comparing millions of individual games, we find a small but robust micro gender gap: women's scores are about 2% lower than expected when playing a man rather than a woman with an identical rating, age and country. Using a simple theoretical model, we show how this small micro gap may affect women's long-run human capital formation. By reducing effort and increasing the probability of quitting, both effects accumulate to explain a larger share of the macro gap.