Gender Differences in the Response to Competition
A competitive fellowship program had a positive effect on the performance of male students, but not of female students.
Cite this Article
Price, Joseph. "Gender Differences in the Response to Competition." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 61.3 (2008): 320-333.
Price, J. (2008). Gender Differences in the Response to Competition. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 61(3), 320-333.
Price, Joseph. "Gender Differences in the Response to Competition." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 61, no. 3 (2008): 320-333.
Authors
This article was written by and was originally published by Industrial and Labor Relations Review in April of 2008Women occupy only a small fraction of the top positions in professions such as business, politics, and law. Often times the professional path to the top is marked by intense competition. In many professional and educational settings, competition is increasingly seen as a way to improve performance. However, past studies have found that men and women react differently to competition—women tend to perform worse than men, particularly when competing against a man. If this is true, increased competition could lead to greater gender inequality. The Mellon Foundation’s Graduate Education Initiative, a competitive fellowship program, sought to increase graduation rates and decrease time spent working toward a doctoral degree among graduate students. This study investigates whether their program, financially incentivizing PhD students through competition to complete their studies, varies by gender and whether the gender mix of the group influences the outcome.
While the program improved men’s performance, it had no impact on the performance of women.
- Men experienced a 10% increase in performance, as measured by time to degree completion. Men experienced the largest performance gains in departments with a larger fraction of female students.
- Women’s overall performance did not improve in response to the program, but women had greater performance gains in departments with a majority of female students.
- In departments where female students were the majority, an increase in the proportion of female faculty led to further improvements in women’s performance.
- In short, increasing the level of competition within a group may increase average performance, but it may also widen the achievement gap between men and women.
The Mellon Foundation launched the Graduate Education Initiative in 1991. The explicit goal of the initiative was to provide funding to students on a competitive basis to encourage quick progress towards completion of their doctorates. Money was provided to 54 departments at ten institutions over a ten-year period. Institutions then provided this funding to graduate students. In the first few years of this program, this funding was competitive to obtain and provided a substantial financial gain to students, but after several years, the funds were no longer allocated on a competitive basis. This created a natural experiment, which allowed researchers to separate the effects of more competition from the effects of more resources. A separate set of 47 departments was selected as a control group for this analysis.
The sample includes 9,664 students who entered the control and treatment departments between 1982 and 1995. Women made up slightly less than half the sample. The Mellon Foundation collected annual data from the control and treatment departments on the funding and progress of each student.
Cite this Article
Price, Joseph. "Gender Differences in the Response to Competition." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 61.3 (2008): 320-333.
Price, J. (2008). Gender Differences in the Response to Competition. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 61(3), 320-333.
Price, Joseph. "Gender Differences in the Response to Competition." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 61, no. 3 (2008): 320-333.
