Why women don’t run: Experimental evidence on gender differences in political competition aversion

Jessica Preece and Olga Stoddard

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2015, vol. 117, issue C, 296-308

Abstract: Women's underrepresentation in leadership positions has been well documented, but the reasons behind it are not well understood. We carry out a field experiment to test a prominent theory about the source of the gender gap in leadership ambition: women's higher aversion to competitive environments. Using politics as a context for our study, we employ two distinct subject pools – highly politically active individuals and workers from an online labor market. We find that priming individuals to consider the competitive nature of politics has a strong negative effect on women's interest in political office, but not on men's interest, hence significantly increasing the gender gap in leadership ambition.

Keywords: Field experiment; Gender gap; Leadership; Competition; Competition aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:117:y:2015:i:c:p:296-308

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2015.04.019

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