Women compete just as hard as men for top jobs and can win them more often, auction-style study suggests
New behavioral economics research on gender and competition, using bidding experiments, finds no overall gender gap in competitiveness; where a gap does appear, it is women who push hardest for the highest positions.
A new study using auction-style competition to measure competitiveness between genders finds no overall gender gap in willingness to compete for top jobs. In fact, women were often more aggressive in their bids for high-paying positions, especially in companies with smaller salary gaps between levels. Both men and women showed a preference for middle positions and underbid for top jobs, meaning the winners ended up no better off financially than those who settled for less.
The research, published in Theory and Decision, challenges the assumption that women are less competitive than men and suggests that fierce competition for top positions may eliminate the financial benefit of higher salaries.
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