Does our gender pre-determine our choice of tasks?

“Large gender differences in the propensity to choose challenging tasks … appear to be driven by gender differences in risk aversion and in confidence about the ability to perform a new and potentially difficult task.”

How’s that for a quote!

You can read the full article here, “Gender Differences: The Role of Institutions” but here are some snippets that might make you situp and take notice:

• “The psychological literature suggests that women and men may differ in ways that affect economic decisions such as their self-perception of ability”
• “Women may not only be less certain about their abilities but also more risk averse, and less willing to explore and test their abilities.”
• “the authors predict that reducing the expectation of up-front commitment may especially help high performing women to move into harder and more challenging tasks”.

(Photo courtesy of SillyDog Photos, used under Creative Commons License)