Women Do Like to Compete — Against Themselves

The New York Times:

About 10 years ago, when we were both Ph.D. students at Harvard, we were invited to participate in an unofficial and largely secret wrestling tournament organized by a fellow student. The idea was to showcase a handful of competitive wrestling matches between graduate students in different departments to an invitation-only audience. Space and gym mats were rented, a referee and a master of ceremonies were appointed, and monetary bets were placed on individual matches. Each wrestler had his or her own costume, entrance song and fan base. Alcohol flowed freely among the spectators.

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We were only acquaintances back then, and would have never guessed that all these years later, we would be professors collaborating on research about competitiveness in women. A recent study of ours, which will be published in May in the Papers and Proceedings issue of the American Economic Review, found that there are certain situations in which women can be just as competitive as men. This finding, we hope, will help alter some longstanding assumptions about women in the workplace.

Read the whole story: The New York Times