Does Unfairness Hurt Women? The Effects of Losing Unfair Competitions

Arbeitspapier

How do men and women differ in their persistence after experiencing failure in a competitive environment? We tackle this question by combining a large online experiment (N=2,086) with machine learning. We find that when losing is unequivocally due to merit, both men and women exhibit a significant decrease in subsequent tournament entry. However, when the prior tournament is unfair, i.e., a loss is no longer necessarily based on merit, women are more discouraged than men. These results suggest that transparent meritocratic criteria may play a key role in preventing women from falling behind after experiencing a loss.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 10572

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: General ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡ ; Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination ; Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
• Subject: competitiveness ; gender ; fairness ; machine learning ; online experiment

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Piasenti, Stefano ; Valente, Marica ; van Veldhuizen, Roel ; Pfeifer, Gregor
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/279323
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET