Gender Dynamics in Competitive Environments. Exploring Performance Disparities and Influencing Factors

Master''s Thesis from the year 2023 in the subject Gender Studies, grade: 1,7, University of Duisburg-Essen (Mercator School of Management), language: English, abstract: Competitiveness has been traditionally thought to increase productivity. However, some studies, have shown that competition can affect women''s performance negatively. In order to design better strategies that promote the performance of all genders and increase the overall performance, it is important to understand why this is the case. Therefore, this thesis tries to better understand how competition tends to negatively affect women’s performance, by studying what can influence the performance in general. According to Booth & Nolan (2022) the type of opponent can affect behavior and results in competitive environments. Therefore, this thesis also analysis if there is a performance difference competing against a real person (in the following called real-other) or an uncertain goal (in the following called threshold).