Mitigating the Gender Gap in the Willingness to Compete: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment∗

The lower willingness of females to compete is extensively documented, and has a wide range of implications including gender gaps in occupational choice, achievement and labor market outcomes. In this paper we evaluate the impact on competitiveness of two randomized interventions that involve (1) targeted education to foster grit, a non-cognitive skill that has been shown to be highly predictive of achievement, (2) exposure to successful female role models. The interventions are implemented in a large sample of elementary schools, and we measure their impact using a dynamic competition task with interim performance feedback. We find that competitiveness is malleable in both girls and boys. Specifically, when children are exposed to a worldview that encourages goalsetting and perseverance, the gender gap in the willingness to compete disappears. Introducing successful female role models to all children, however, does not replicate this effect, as it leads both boys and girls to compete more relative to control group, leaving the gender gap intact. We explore the effect of treatments on self-confidence and the response to performance feedback as a potential mechanism to explain these results. JEL Categories: C91, C93, D03, I28