ERN EM Feeds | 2021
Equality of the Sexes and Gender Differences in Competitiveness: Experimental Evidence from a Traditional Society with Gender-Balanced Norms
Abstract
Can gender-balanced social norms mitigate the gender gap in competitiveness that has been documented for modern as well as traditional patriarchic societies? We identify a society in northeast India where women and men have had similar rights and entitlements from time immemorial, to conduct the first lab-in-the-field experiment in a traditional society with gender-balanced norms. For reference we conduct the same competition experiments in adjoining traditional patriarchic and matrilineal societies. We find no significant gender difference in the inclination to compete in the gender-balanced society – unlike in the patriarchic society. We also find that women’s decisions in our experiment are payoff-maximizing more often than men’s in the gender-balanced society – opposite to the pattern encountered in the patriarchic society. Our results highlight the long-term effects of culture on economic behavior and indicate that the large gender gap in competitiveness documented for modern societies is a long-term consequence of their patriarchic foretime.