Are the Most Competitive Men More Resilient to Failures than the Most Competitive Women? Evidence from Professional Golf Tournaments*

Abstract

Objectives Women are underrepresented in top positions and experimental evidence suggests that one explanation is gender differences in preferences for competition, that is, fewer women than men enter competition‐intensive careers. Less is known about whether there are remaining gender differences in competitiveness within the subpopulation of men and women that choose to pursue such careers, which creates further female underrepresentation in top positions. Studying a subcomponent of competitiveness, namely resilience to failures, this article provides quasi experimental evidence from the field on this issue. Methods I study professional golfers’ resilience to failures by estimating the causal effect of a failure in one tournament on the performance in the next. Results The results show that both male and female golfers respond negatively to failures, and that their responses are virtually identical. Conclusion Thus, in this particular subpopulation of competitive men and women there seems to be no gender difference in resilience to failures.