Women Quitters in Exit Competitions. Reliable Indicators of Women’s Risk Aversion?

Women are more fearful of taking risks than men. Researchers suggest that the early exit behavior of women in gameshows such as ‘Deal or no Deal’ (risk-aversion) helps to explain the underrepresentation of women at senior levels in politics, business and management because early-exit is associated with reduced risk taking. The Kiel economists Aoife Hanley and Eike-Christian Schmidt simulate the ‘Deal or no Deal’ gameshow in Facebook and gather information on exit patterns of 483 people. They find that women, on average, exit 0.45 rounds earlier than men but that for women with comparable earnings and education to men, gender differences in risk taking are less obvious (women now exit 0.12 rounds earlier).