The Emergence of Male Leadership in Competitive Environments
17 Pages Posted: 14 Nov 2010
Abstract
We present evidence from an experiment in which groups select a leader to compete against the leaders of other groups in a real-effort task that they have all performed in the past. We find that women are selected much less often as leaders than is suggested by their individual past performance. We study three potential explanations for the underrepresentation of women, namely, gender differences in overconfidence concerning past performance, in the willingness to exaggerate past performance to the group, and in the reaction to monetary incentives. We find that men’s overconfidence is the driving force behind the observed prevalence of male representation.
Keywords: discrimination, gender gap, glass ceiling, overconfidence, leadership
JEL Classification: J71, D03, C92
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Do Women Shy Away from Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?
By Muriel Niederle and Lise Vesterlund
-
By Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn
-
The Us Gender Pay Gap in the 1990s: Slowing Convergence
By Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn
-
The U.S. Gender Pay Gap in the 1990s: Slowing Convergence
By Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn
-
Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society
By Uri Gneezy, Kenneth L. Leonard, ...
-
Estimating the Effect of Personality on Male-Female Earnings
By Gerrit Mueller and Erik Plug
-
Sex-Based Differences in School Content and the Male/Female Wage Gap
By Charles Brown and Mary Corcoran