We examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment. Participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task, first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme. Although there are no gender differences in performance, men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance. While 73 percent of the men select the tournament, only 35 percent of the women make this choice. This gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance, and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only play a negligible role. Instead, the tournamententry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition. The result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it.

We study gender differences in altruism by examining a modi ed dictator game with varying incomes and prices. Our results indicate that the question "which is the fair sex?" has a complicated answer-when altruism is expensive, women are kinder, but when it is cheap, men are more altruistic. That is, we nd that the male and female "demand curves for altruism" cross, and that men are more responsive to price changes. Furthermore, men are more likely to be either perfectly sel sh or perfectly sel ess, whereas women tend to be "equalitarians" who prefer to share evenly.

Laboratory studies have documented that women often respond less favorably to competition than men. Conditional on performance, men are often more eager to compete, and the performance of men tends to respond more positively to an increase in competition. This means that few women enter and win competitions. We review studies that examine the robustness of these differences as well the factors that may give rise to them. Both laboratory and field studies largely confirm these initial findings, showing that gender differences in competitiveness tend to result from differences in overconfidence and in attitudes toward competition. Gender differences in risk aversion, however, seem to play a smaller and less robust role. We conclude by asking what could and should be done to encourage qualified males and females to compete.

O O ver the past 60 years, there have been substantial improvements in the ver the past 60 years, there have been substantial improvements in the college preparation of female students and the college gender gap has college preparation of female students and the college gender gap has changed dramatically. Goldin, Katz, and Kuziemko (2006) show that changed dramatically. Goldin, Katz, and Kuziemko (2006) show that female high school students now outperform male students in most subjects and in female high school students now outperform male students in most subjects and in particular on verbal test scores. The ratio of male to female college graduates has particular on verbal test scores. The ratio of male to female college graduates has not only decreased, but reversed itself, and the majority of college graduates are not only decreased, but reversed itself, and the majority of college graduates are now female. now female.The gender gap in mathematics has also changed. The number of math The gender gap in mathematics has also changed. The number of math and science courses taken by female high school students has increased and now and science courses taken by female high school students has increased and now the mean and standard deviation in performance on math test scores are only the mean and standard deviation in performance on math test scores are only slightly larger for males than for females. Despite minor differences in mean slightly larger for males than for females. Despite minor differences in mean performance, Hedges and Nowell (1995) show that many more boys than girls performance, Hedges and Nowell (1995) show that many more boys than girls perform at the right tail of the distribution.

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