How social structure shapes female competition throughout her lifetime
基于马拉维农村母系和父系社区中12至90岁女性的实验数据，研究发现性别竞争差距并非普遍存在，而是随年龄、生育状态和社会结构变化，尤其受母亲身份影响。
Many studies find a consistent gender gap in competitiveness where men are more likely to compete than women given the same level of ability. Using data from experiments with women ages 12 through 90 in matrilocal and patrilocal communities in rural Malawi, we show that this gender gap does not exist uniformly for all women nor across their whole lifetime. We first replicate three main findings from the gender and competition literature: (i) women are less likely to compete on average; and the gender gap differs by (ii) culture and by (iii) age. In a new finding, we show that the gender gap changes in a theoretically-predicted manner with motherhood status. We argue that these results, when combined, point to an overarching theory of gender and competition–one that is driven by environmental constraints that vary with age, fertility, and social structure.