Seminar Gender Behavior and Decision-Making, with Nathan Barrymore

The next session of the seminar « Gender, Behavior and Decision-Making » will take place on Tuesday the 28th of January from 5 pm to 6 pm online (Teams). The Teams link will be provided in due time.

We will have the pleasure to listen to Nathan Barrymore who will present "Are there gender differences in ambition? Evidence from an online experiment" (with Cristian Dezső and Ben King). 

Register here
 

Nathan Barrymore is an Assistant Professor of Business, Government and Society at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin, and a senior fellow at the Wharton ESG Initiative. He studies corporate ESG (environmental, social and governance issues), with an emphasis on employees.

Abstract

We investigate gender differences in ambition, which we conceptualize as a construct consisting of one’s aspiration level, or goal setting, and one’s striving to achieve that aspiration level, or goal pursuit. Using an incentivized online experiment with approximately 1,600 participants, we examine how men and women set and pursue performance goals in a word-puzzle task. We find no significant gender differences in either goal setting or goal pursuit, even after controlling for risk preferences, confidence, competitiveness, and conscientiousness, and across a linear incentive scheme and a quadratic one that allocates outsized rewards for achieving high goals. Our findings challenge the notion that men are more ambitious than women and suggest that gender disparities in outcomes in various contexts (educational, professional, etc.) stem from factors other than inherent ambition. 

About the Women & Science Chair   

The Women and Science Chair at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL, created with the support of the L’Oréal Foundation, the Generali Foundation, La Poste, and the Talan Group, seeks to engage and foster interdisciplinary approaches to analyzing the causes and consequences of the underrepresentation of women in careers in scientific research and academia. The Women and Science Chair is member of the UNESCO chairs network.

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