Gender and Competition: The Role of Socialization

虽然妇女在工作场所赶上男子方面取得了巨大进步，但在工资和晋升水平方面仍然存在性别差距。这篇文献中的一个重要难题涉及导致观察到的性别差异的潜在因素。对这一差距的常见解释从性别歧视的指控到声称由于社会化，妇女比男子对工作与家庭的冲突更敏感，因此不太愿意为事业做出牺牲。这种解释被归类为文化或教养。 另一种假设是，男人和女人天生不同。例如，在讨论为什么科学领域的男性人数大大超过女性时，几位知名学者认为，男性天生就更有能力在这些职业中竞争。这种解释被归类为自然。 这个项目将使用实验来探索这两个假设。为此，该项目在两个不同的社会中使用了一项实验任务：坦桑尼亚的马赛人和印度的卡西人。这些文明的一个独特方面是，马赛人是父权社会的教科书范例，而卡西人是母系社会。在这些社会中，研究人员研究竞争环境中的选择。 试点研究结果表明，与西方文化中的实验数据得出的现有证据类似，马赛族男子选择参加竞争的比率大约是马赛族妇女的两倍。有趣的是，这一结果在卡西族中正好相反，女性比卡西族男性更经常选择竞争环境，甚至比马赛族男性更经常选择弱竞争。这些结果提供了初步的见解假设是观察到的性别差异的重要决定因素的基础。特别是，这些数据提供了第一个证据，表明现有的社会结构与竞争力的性别差异密切相关。此外，在印度的一个市场进行实地研究，研究两种不同的文化（母系和父系），在同一个市场上互动的讨价还价行为，并研究差异的贡献，公共goods.The更广泛的影响所产生的拟议活动：这项研究提供了深入了解社会化和行为特征之间的重要联系，影响经济成果。这种见解在政策界具有重要意义，因为如果对工作中的基本结构理解不清，政策的针对性可能会受到严重的误导。了解性别差异的原因有助于制定旨在缩小工作场所性别差距的政策。

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. An important puzzle in this literature relates to the underlying factors responsible for the observed gender differences. Commonly cited explanations for this gap range from charges of sex discrimination to claims that, as a result of socialization, women are more sensitive than men to work-family conflicts and thus less inclined to make sacrifices for their careers. This kind of explanations is classified as cultural or nurture. An alternative hypothesis that has been put forth is that men and women are born different. For example, in discussions concerning why men considerably outnumber women in the sciences, several high profile scholars have argued that men are innately better equipped to compete in such professions. This kind of explanation is classified as nature. This project would use experiments to explore those two hypotheses. To that end, the project uses an experimental task across two distinct societies: the Maasai in Tanzania and the Khasi in India. One unique aspect of these civilizations is that the Maasai represent a textbook example of a patriarchal society whereas the Khasi are matrilineal. In those societies the investigators study selection into competitive environments. The pilot findings show that, similar to the extant evidence drawn from experimental data in Western cultures, Maasai men opt to compete at roughly twice the rate as Maasai women. Interestingly, this result is reversed amongst the Khasi, where women choose the competitive environment considerably more often than Khasi men, and even choose to compete weakly more often than Maasai men. These results provide initial insights into the underpinnings of the factors hypothesized to be important determinants of the observed gender differences. In particular, the data provide a first piece of evidence that the existing societal structure is crucially linked to the observedgender differences in competitiveness.This award supports from a full experiment of the competition task. In addition, a field study is conducted in a market in India to study bargaining behavior of two distinct cultures (matriarchal and patriarchal) that interact in the same market, and to study differences in contribution to public goods.The broader impacts resulting from the proposed activity: This study provides insights into the crucial link between socialization and behavioral traits that influence economic outcomes. Such insights have import within the policy community where targeting of policies can be importantly misguided if the underlying structure at work is ill-understood. Understanding the reasons for gender differences can help in designing policies that target reducing the gender gap in the workplace.