Does Decision Making for Others Close the Gender Gap in Competition?

Abstract

We examine whether the gender gap in competitiveness in stereotypically male tasks persists when the decision to compete is made by someone else. In a within-subject laboratory experiment, decision makers make competition entry decisions for both themselves and a randomly selected other. Although we replicate the standard gender gap in decisions for oneself, we do not find a gender gap when the decision to compete is made by someone else. This is driven by men being significantly more willing to enter themselves than others into competitions. Men’s and women’s willingness to enter others into competitions is statistically indistinguishable from women’s willingness to enter themselves into competitions. Subgroup analyses reveal that competitive preferences are significantly greater for Asian than non-Asian subjects. Our results have implications for the effectiveness of nominations and mentorship to close gender gaps in labor market outcomes that are affected by competitive preferences. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: This work was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation [Grant G-5602]. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4861 .