Context Matters: A Review of Gender Differences in the Willingness to Compet
Somdeepa Das
Please cite the paper as:
Somdeepa Das, (2022), Context Matters: A Review of Gender Differences in the Willingness to Compet, World Economics Association (WEA) Conferences, No. 1 2022, Feminist Economics, Contributions and Challenges
This is a very interesting paper. Thank you for putting this out.
Regarding the gender appropriate social behaviour, I think you may find some interesting work by recent studies on text mining. For example, display of timid behaviour or agreeable nature of women by overusing the word sorry or thank you.
Prachi
This is very interesting, Somdeepa.
I just wanted to add on the gender appropriate social behaviour, you may find something relevant from the studies using text mining. For example, overuse of sorry or thank you by women vis a vis men.
For instance, look at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03906701.2020.1724365
I just finished reading your paper. I find it a very good overview of recent developments in this area. Given my own experience. this made me wonder what characteristics ‘non-competitive’ men have and how this impacts their success.
‘Success can be defined in so many ways, so that competitive behavior can be directed in so many ways. For example, some people may be internally driven perform beyond what most would be consider to be success – such as success measured by money. There are additional implications for gender differences and conflict in other setting as as well. Here is a link to a useful exploratory article that explores the differences between male ‘baby boomers’ and male ‘millennials’ in the US.
Green, A. and McClelland, C. (2019). “Male Gender Expression Conflict Between Baby Boomers and Millennials.” Pepperdine Journal of Communication Research 7(6), pp. 6-19
https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1110&context=pjcr
It seems a comment I made a couple of days ago was never posted.
I think you are correct to highlight the idea that “…gender differences in attitudes towards competition has a significant effect on women’s salaries and self-selection to low paying sectors. Later you also mentioned the impact of the willingness to negotiate, thus giving rise to salary difference within the same sector.
I also very much like the section ‘Bridging the gap” where you point of that gender preferences for competition are ‘formed by norms that emerge from the historical processes that underpin women’s oppression, rather than being an ahistorical black box.” It may be that such gender norms did not necessarily ‘reduce’ women’s competitiveness but directed it into channels acceptable to those societies at those times and places. This seems to be highlighted in the section on ‘The Role of Context.” That is a very key point.