Social-status ranking: a hidden channel to gender inequality under competition

Abstract

Competition involves two main dimensions, a rivalry for resources and the ranking of relative performance. If socially recognized, the latter yields a ranking in terms of social status. The rivalry for resources resulting from competitive incentives has been found to negatively affect women's performance relative to that of men. However, little is known about gender differences in the performance consequences of social-status ranking. In our experiments we introduce a novel design that allows us to isolate the effects of status ranking from those caused by a rivalry for resources. Subjects do a time-limited task where they need to search for numbers and add them up. Performance is straightforwardly measured by the number of correct summations. When there is no status ranking we find no gender differences in the number of attempted summations or in performance. By contrast, when there is status ranking men significantly increase the number of attempted -018-9563-6 summations as well as the number of correct summations. Remarkably, when women are subjected to status ranking, they significantly decrease the number of attempted summations. The net result is striking. With status ranking men attempt more summations and correctly solve many more than women. These differences are markedly large and statistically highly significant. Our results suggest that increased participation in competitive environments could harm women's labor market success along a hidden channel.

How Stress Affects Performance and Competitiveness Across Gender

“…Third, another possibility is that tournament incentives could accentuate social comparison, which has been shown to decrease women's performance in other contexts (Ashraf et al 2014, Schram et al 2019. The calculation task plausibly produces a "stereotype threat" among female subjects owing to negative attitudes about women's math ability (Spencer et al 1999).…”

Centrality and cooperation in networks

“…The number of (independent) observations is thus six in each comparison sample (cf. Moir 1998 and the discussion in Appendix 3 of Schram et al 2018). Nevertheless, our results and conclusions are robust to using Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests instead (see Table C.1 in Appendix C).…”

Are Women Status-Ranking Averse?

“…Although rivalry for resources and social-status ranking are two separate dimensions of a single phenomenon, competition, it is not a-priori obvious that differences between women and men's attitudes toward one dimension should carry over to the other. In Schram et al (2019) -henceforth, SBG19-, we show that the gender differences in performance under rivalry for resources are indeed also observed when there is only social-status ranking; women underperform compared to men when there is such ranking, even when there is no rivalry for resources.…”