Are men really more competitive than women? - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine

h/t Michelle.

Are men really more competitive than women? - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine:

Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty. Click image to expand.'You've lost the warrior instinct,' explained my friend's boss as he fired her after years of 100-hour work weeks. Delivered to a female employee, the comment contained an undercurrent of sexism and, when combined with some of her on-the-job experiences, probably constituted what civil rights lawyers call an 'actionable statement.' My friend, however, chalked it up to the macho, hyper-competitive environment of her chosen profession: investment banking.

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Why Khasi women are relatively competitive is a matter of speculation. The authors suggest that it may stem from the relatively uncommon practice of female-directed household decision-making and inheritance. In the Khasi society, women who learn to compete for resources get to keep the fruits of their efforts, and also pass on the wealth they generate to their daughters. Regardless of the underlying cause, the work of Gneezy, Leonard, and List proves that the Western stereotype of the male competitor isn't universal: The male "warrior instinct" is a matter of socialization rather than instinct. (More recent work by Jane Zhang, an economics doctoral student at the University of California-Berkeley, further bolsters this view—in a set of experiments she ran in China last summer, Zhang found that neither gender had a stronger preference for competition in the communities she studied.)