Gender Differences in Competition
Muriel Niederle and Lise Vesterlund

Negotiating in a highly competitive environment may prove particularly challenging for women. We describe three experimental studies that investigated and documented differences in the competitive behaviors of men and women. The first study examined gender differences in competitive performances. In a setting in which men and women performed at similar levels in single-sex competitions, men were found to outperform women in mixed-sex competitions. The second study focused on the decision of men and women to enter a competition. In a mixed-sex setting in which we found no gender differences in performance, many more men than women chose a compensation scheme in which they had to compete against others. Finally, we report the results of a recent study that examined an institutional intervention that may encourage more women to compete. Specifically, we found that a quota-like affirmative action environment in which women must be equally represented encourages many more women to compete. This response was greater than one would predict based solely on the increase in one’s chances of winning and can be partially explained by the fact that the affirmative action competition was more gender specific.

Muriel Niederle is an associate professor of economics at Stanford University and faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Her e-mail address is niederle@ stanford.edu. Lise Vesterlund is the Andrew W. Mellon Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. Her e-mail address is vester@pitt.edu.
10.1111/j.1571-9979.2008.00197.x © 2008 President and Fellows of Harvard College

Negotiation Journal

October 2008 447

Key words: negotiation, gender confidence.

differences, competition,

Introduction
Across fields there remains substantial vertical segregation between men and women. A disproportionate number of professional and managerial senior