Do Women Prefer a Co-operative Work Environment?

Peter Kuhn and Marie Claire Villeval

No 1127, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: Are women disproportionately attracted to work environments where cooperation rather than competition is rewarded ? This paper reports the results of a real-effort experiment in which participants choose between an individual compensation scheme and a team-based payment scheme. We find that women are more likely than men to select team-based compensation in our baseline treatment, but women and men join teams with equal frequency when we add an efficiency advantage to team production. Using a simple structural discrete choice framework to reconcile these facts, we show that three elements can account for the observed patterns in the team-entry gender gap : (1) a gender gap in confidence in others (i.e. women are less pessimistic about their prospective teammates’ relative ability), (2) a greater responsiveness among men to instrumental reasons for joining teams, and (3) a greater “pure” preference for working in a team environment among women.

Keywords: gender; cooperation; self-selection; confidence; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 J16 J24 J31 M5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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ftp://ftp.gate.cnrs.fr/RePEc/2011/1127.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Do women prefer cooperative work environnement? (2012)
Working Paper: Do women prefer cooperative work environnement? (2012)
Working Paper: Do women prefer cooperative work environnement? (2012)
Working Paper: Do women prefer cooperative work environnement? (2012)
Working Paper: Do women prefer cooperative work environnement? (2012)
Working Paper: Do Women Prefer a Co-operative Work Environment? (2011)
Working Paper: Do Women Prefer a Co-operative Work Environment? (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gat:wpaper:1127

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