Gender differences in risk aversion: Do single-sex environments affect their development?

Alison Booth, Lina Cardona Sosa, Mon, 02/06/2012

Some blame women’s under-representation in high-level jobs on differences between the sexes in risk aversion and competitiveness. But are these differences in behaviour hardwired or learned? The authors of CEPR DP8690 tackled this thorny question with a controlled experiment in single-sex and co-educational classrooms. Women, they find, become far less timorous about uncertainty with the men out of the room.

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URL: http://www.cepr.org/DP8690

Topics: Education Labour markets

Tags: education, gender equality, risk aversion