Research Project
A growing literature on gender differences has shown that women are more risk-averse, less effective negotiators, less confidence, less able to express themselves and share their ideas, and more likely to underplay the role they could play in contributing to the health of the group.
These differences are likely to result in gender differences in venture capital success; if one does not take risks, express oneself well, or have strong leadership skills, it is difficult to run a business or attract investors.
In this project, we will study how a specific kind of non-cognitive skill from capital-risk - pitching - might affect girls’ psychological traits, perception, and academic achievement. The evaluation will be a three-pronged process:
- First, we will survey parents online to measure the differences in how they perceive assertiveness in boys and girls and to document differences in parental investment in developing the non-cognitive skills of their child according to gender.
- Second, we will conduct an experiment using elementary school children in Norway to assess the impact of a pitch contest on the self-confidence, assertiveness, and self-concept of girls.
- We also plan to combine the data from our experiment with data from the Norwegian registry, an administrative dataset containing extremely rich information on children’s academic performance and their parents’ performance on the labor market.
The results of our study could potentially be used to design scalable tools that could be engaged with by schools and policy makers who want to address early-stage sexist behavior.