Gender and competitiveness in the labour market

This work is motivated by an important problem in society: the gender wage gap, and theclaim that competitiveness is an explaining factor. An extensive literature review is provided and as a result, a laboratory experiment is proposed and planned to represent a labour market setting with workers and employers. The main goal is to observe whether competitiveness is a valuable attribute and whether gender makes a difference on this. The novelty of this proposal is that it improves capturing the employer¿s behaviour relative to other studies, and it lets workers decide whether to show this attribute. The role of gender stereotypes in the labour market is highlighted as a possible reason for the differences generally found in the competitiveness gap between men and women, and as a framework to predict results from this experiment. Furthermore, extensions to this design are suggested.