A Research Finding That Women Are More Competitive When They’re Given An Option To Share Winnings May Help Close The Gender Pay Gap
Mary L. Rigdon, University of Arizona
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The big idea
Women are more likely to take risks and engage in competitive activities if they’re allowed to share their potential winnings with peers, according to new research I co-authored. Since one explanation of the gender pay gap is that women tend to be less competitive than men in workplace settings, this finding could lead to ways to narrow it.
In a study published on Nov. 1, 2021, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Alessandra Cassar and I report an experiment in which we invited 238 undergraduate students – split almost evenly between men and women – into our labs to solve a simple numbers puzzle. We wanted to see how different types of financial incent...