CeDEx Brown Bag Seminar - Elvis Cheng Xu

This week's Brown Bag will be given by Elvis Cheng Xu

Gender Gap in Tournaments Participation: Experiments Using a Cooperative Task

Abstract: It is often found that towards the top end of organization hierarchies, women are less represented.  Some often argued that it is because women shy away from workplace competitions. The research literature often attributes this gender difference as a result of discrimination and gender differences in preferences. Recent experimental economics research has suggested that women are reluctant to enter competitive tournaments due to being less confident, more risk-averse and dislike competitions. These findings are mostly observed in experiments based on non-cooperative tasks. This research proposed a new experimental design to test whether women’s reluctance to enter competitions will weaken in a cooperative task.  We found that the gender gap in tournament participation significantly decreases in the treatment of a cooperative task. We propose that companies could better encourage their female employees to work under more competitive environments by varying the performance evaluation models that are being applied.

1pm to 2pm - A41 Sir Clive Granger (lunch provided).