Gender and Competitiveness: An experimental study

Sammanfattning: Recent experimental economic research often shows that men are more eager than women to compete. In our study on Swedish secondary school students we find that this gender difference is task dependant. Moving from a task perceived by the subjects as male to a task perceived as female changes the patterns in competitive behaviour. We therefore conclude that it is hard to draw general conclusions on gender differences in competitiveness from experimental research on specific tasks. These findings also support the idea that competitive behaviour could be changed through changing people’s perception of what is male and what is female.