On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 05:17:53PM -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Business Week - December 9, 2002
>
> Economic Trends
> By Gene Koretz
>
> Are Women Less Competitive?
>
> Although women have made huge strides in catching up with men in the
> workplace, a gender gap persists both in wages and levels of
> advancement. Commonly cited explanations for this gap range from
> charges of sex discrimination to claims that women are more sensitive
> than men to work-family conflicts and thus less inclined to make
> sacrifices for their careers.
>
> Now, however, two new studies by economists Uri Gneezy of the
> University of Chicago and Aldo Rustichini of the University of
> Minnesota suggest that another factor may be at work: a deeply
> ingrained difference in the way men and women react to competition
> that manifests itself even at an early age.
>
> The first study focused on short races run by some 140 9- and
> 10-year-old boys and girls in a physical education class. At that
> age, there was no significant difference between the average speeds
> of boys and girls when each child ran the course alone. But when
> pairs of children with similar initial speeds ran the race again,
> things changed. Boys' speeds increased appreciably when running
> against either a boy or a girl, but more so when paired with a girl.
> Girls showed no increase when running against a boy, and even ran a
> bit more slowly when paired with a girl.
>
> The second study, by Gneezy, Rustichini, and Muriel Niederle of
> Stanford University, involved several hundred students at an elite
> Israeli technical university. Groups of six students were paid to
> solve simple maze problems on a computer. In some groups, subjects
> were paid 50 cents for each problem they solved during the
> experiment. In others, only the person solving the most problems got
> rewarded--but at the rate of $3 for each maze solved.
> Regardless of the sexual makeup of the groups, men and women, on
> average, did equally well when students were paid for their own
> performance. But when only the top student was paid, average male
> performance rose sharply--by about 50%--while female performance
> remained the same.
>
> The authors conclude that females tend to be far less responsive to
> competition than males--a tendency with important implications for
> women and business. It may hurt women in highly competitive labor
> markets, for example, and hamper efficient job placement--especially
> for positions in which competitiveness is not a useful trait.
>
> That's something companies with highly competitive atmospheres may
> need to consider, says Rustichini. If they don't, the results could
> be "both a subtle bias against women and, in many cases, foregone
> worker productivity."
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu