On reading the paper highlighted this week from Gerald Wu, Grace Lordan and Nikita from the London School of Economics and Political Science I was struck by some obvious shortcomings.
The sample size is limited, the focus is on a small demographic, the structure of the experiment didn’t convince me it was rigorous and as a result I found the conclusions interesting, but not compelling.
Having said all that, this piece has value in one important respect. It highlights the weakness of social science research conducted in Western Educated Industrialized Rich Developed (or WEIRD) contexts.
A consistent finding from WEIRD research on gender difference is that women are less competitive than men. It follows therefore that a gender pay gap may be the natural result of this diminished appetite for risk.
What this study shows, in China, there appears to be no difference between the sexes in terms of risk appetite and that, in fact, women in the study show a slight bias towards risk taking.
The paper rambles through aspects of the social context peculiar to China, videlicet; ‘Harmony and Collectivism’, Giving and Saving Face’, ‘Conformity, Hierarchy and Power-distance’, Taoism, Confucianism and Legalism which may help explain an observed gender pay gap there too.
However, the main point is the findings of the paper are at odds with findings in work from the WEIRD world and that alone should prompt more work like this, especially in other areas where conclusions have been reached in the same context.
You can read the paper in full via this link Are There Gender Differences in the Propensity to Compete in China?
Happy Sunday.