the war of the sexes ... or the war of the genders?

Is competitiveness determined by sex or gender? Here the interesting answer in a new paper by Flory, Leonard and List:

 Using a dataset with over 700 subjects from Malawi who vary across a broad range of ages, we find that the gender gap in competitiveness in fact disappears as men and women grow older. We also find that culture can significantly affect both the gender gap and the change in the gender gap with age. Similar to Gneezy, Leonard and List (2009) we compare matrilineal and matrilocal cultures to patrilineal and patrilocal cultures. Not only is the gender gap significantly smaller in matrilocal societies, but there is much smaller change in the competitive preferences of women in matrilocal societies when compared to patrilocal societies. Gender is a combination of culture and biology and we find that the way women react to competitive environments changes with their age (potentially determined by hormonal changes as women age) and by their culture.

ht: Development impact