How competitive sport can reduce gender inequality

In the job market, a competitive spirit seems to be sought after by many employers. This is no doubt why former athletes often benefit from certain favors when they are employed. These may take the form of a salary bonus, ranging from 5% to 20% depending on the study,fringe benefits or even greater employability. Several studies have also shown that competitive sport shapes behavior, whatever the type of sport. Exposed to intense competition, athletes' risk tolerance is amplified, and their desire to win is the fundamental driving force behind them.

Marc Willinger, University of Montpellier

Could this be a way of reducing the gender gap? If women were to develop a more risk-taking and competitive profile through competitive sport, would they have more job opportunities and higher income prospects?

To demonstrate this, we conducted an experiment comparing athletes and non-athletes in their attitudes to risk and their taste for competition. The results show similarities between female athletes and male non-athletes.

Sporting activities that reduce discrepancies

How do you measure whether someone is competitive or not? We used a variant of the protocol developed by two women, Muriel Niederle from Stanford University and Lise Vesterlund from the University of Pittsburgh. They focused on the gender gap in this area: a competitive deficit among women and excessive competitiveness among men, in comparison with their respective performances. In our experiment, participants were asked to perform two tasks in succession: a counting task and a ball-throwing task.

The first task involved counting, in five minutes, the number of "1s" present in a succession of tables where they were mixed with "0s". In the second, they had to send three foam balls into a wastepaper basket two meters away.

In each case, participants could choose between two payment methods. The first option was "pay-per-play", which guaranteed that participants would be remunerated according to their performance: each correct count or each ball in the basket earned 50 centimes. There was also the option of a "tournament payout": this remuneration method pits the participant against other participants who have also made this choice. This option offers a higher payout - 2 euros per correct count, or per ball in the basket if you're the winner. It does, however, entail a risk: only the participant who achieves the best score in his or her group is remunerated. The others earn nothing. By opting for tournament payment, participants reveal their taste for competition and their appetite for risk-taking, which was also measured independently using a specific individual risk-taking task.

78 individual athletes who regularly (at least monthly) take part in national and/or international competitions were selected to take part, along with 77 other participants who are not involved in sports championships. Around 85% of participants were students. The two samples were comparable in terms of distribution by age, gender and level of study. All participants were volunteers.

61% of athletes chose the tournament for the ball-throwing task, compared with only 27% of non-athletes. For the counting task, 57% of athletes chose the tournament versus 41% of non-athletes. Female athletes were less competitive than their male counterparts, but more competitive than male non-athletes. In the ball-throwing task, 50% of female athletes opted for the tournament versus 36% of male non-athletes and only 20% of female non-athletes. Similarly for the counting task, 50% of female athletes opted for the tournament versus 42% of male non-athletes.

A similar result is observed for risk tolerance. Women athletes have a level of risk tolerance comparable to that of non-athletic men, whereas in the general population, almost all studies conclude that men are more risk-tolerant than women.

These observations suggest that competitive sport makes female athletes more like men in terms of their risk appetite and competitiveness, reducing gender gaps in these two dimensions of their preferences.

Developing a competitive spirit at school?

What are the explanatory factors? Four hypotheses are conceivable.

Firstly, female athletes may perform better in competitive tasks than non-athletes. They may prefer to be paid in tournaments because they feel they can achieve higher scores under the pressure of competition. Secondly, female athletes may have a greater appetite for risk and therefore opt for tournament play more frequently than non-athletes. Thirdly, they would be less prosocial than non-athletes: they would care less about the negative consequences inflicted on others by the choice of tournament, i.e. the fact that there are losers who are not rewarded for their efforts in the tasks. And fourthly, female athletes would have developed a strong taste for competition.

The first two hypotheses are clearly rejected by our data. Female athletes' scores on both experimental tasks are no better than those of non-athletes. Although they are slightly more inclined to take risks than non-athletes, risk tolerance has a negligible effect on the probability of choosing the tournament.

The third hypothesis concerning pro-sociality is also ruled out. This factor is measured by experiments forged by experimental economics: the dictator game and the prisoner's dilemma game. In the first, participants are paired anonymously. One member of the pair, the dictator, receives €10 from the experimenter, while the other receives nothing. The dictator can transfer all or part of the sum received to his counterpart, or choose to keep it all.

Prisoner's Dilemma" games are inspired by the following situation. Two criminals are caught and thrown into prison, in separate cells. When questioned, they are given the choice of keeping quiet or passing the blame on to their accomplice. Talking if the other remains silent offers freedom for the first and a heavy sentence for the second. If both speak, however, the sentence is heavier than if they had both remained silent.

Admittedly, we were able to show that female athletes are less generous in the dictator game and less cooperative in the prisoner's dilemma. Nevertheless, pro-sociality measured in this way shows no significant correlation with the probability of choosing the tournament.

We therefore conclude that female athletes' taste for competition is the determining factor in their propensity to choose the tournament, a conclusion supported by responses to an independent questionnaire measuring competitiveness. It should also be noted that choosing the tournament allows athletes to compare themselves with others, and to find out whether their own score was better than that of others chosen at random - information particularly prized and sought after by athletes.

Sport with a strong competitive component seems to make female athletes more competitive and develop a taste for risk-taking, two virtues appreciated and sought after by many employers. Involving women in sporting competition thus appears to be a way of reducing certain gender gaps, and one that could be encouraged in theeducation of young girls from an early age.

Marc Willinger, Professor of Economics, Behavioral and Experimental Economics, University of Montpellier

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.