Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

How Social Structure Shapes Female Competition Throughout Her Lifetime, Jeffrey Flory, Kenneth L. Leonard, Magda Tsaneva, Kathryn Vasilaky

Economics

Many studies find a consistent gender gap in competitiveness where men are more likely to compete than women given the same level of ability. Using data from experiments with women ages 12 through 90 in matrilocal and patrilocal communities in rural Malawi, we show that this gender gap does not exist uniformly for all women nor across their whole lifetime. We first replicate three main findings from the gender and competition literature: (i) women are less likely to compete on average; and the gender gap differs by (ii) culture and by (iii) age. In a new finding, we show that …