The Oxford Handbook of Women and Competition is one of the first scholarly volumes to focus specifically on competition and the competitive forces between women. Chapters provide readers with a definitive view of the current state of research, and collectively address the adaptive and socio-cultural foundations of women's competitive behavior, motivations, and cognitions.

In almost all European Union countries, the gender wage gap is increasing across the wages distribution. In this lecture I briefly survey some recent studies aiming to explain why apparently identical women and men receive such different returns and focus especially on those incorporating pyschological factors as an explanation of the gender gap. Research areas with high potential returns to further analysis are identified. Several examples from my own recent experimental work with Patrick Nolen are also presented. These try to distinguish between the role of nature and nurture in affecting behavioural differences between men and women that might lead to gender wage gaps.

The issue of gender in organizations has attracted much attention and debate over a number of years. The focus of examination is inequality of opportunity between the genders and the impact this has on organizations, individual men and women, and society as a whole. It is undoubtedly the case that progress has been made with women participating in organizational life in greater numbers and at more senior levels than has been historically the case, challenging notions that senior and/or influential organizational and political roles remain a masculine domain. The Oxford Handbook of Gender in Organizations is a comprehensive analysis of thinking and research on gender in organizations with original contributions from key international scholars in the field. The Handbook comprises four sections. The first looks at the theoretical roots and potential for theoretical development in respect of the topic of gender in organizations. The second section focuses on leadership and management and the gender issues arising in this field; contributors review the extensive literature and reflect on progress made as well as commenting on hurdles yet to be overcome. The third section considers the gendered nature of careers. Here the focus is on querying traditional approaches to career, surfacing embedded assumptions within traditional approaches, and assessing potential for alternative patterns to evolve, taking into account the nature of women's lives and the changing nature of organizations. In its final section the Handbook examines masculinity in organizations to assess the diversity of masculinities evident within organizations and the challenges posed to those outside the norm. In bringing together a broad range of research and thinking on gender in organizations across a number of disciplines, sub-disciplines, and conceptual perspectives, the Handbook provides a comprehensive view of both contemporary thinking and future research directions.

Using a controlled experiment, the authors examined the role of nurture in explaining the stylized fact that women shy away from competition. The subjects (students just under 15 years of age) attended publicly-funded single-sex and coeducational schools. Robust differences were found between the competitive choices of girls from single-sex and coed schools. Moreover, girls from single-sex schools behaved more like boys even when randomly assigned to mixed-sex experimental groups. Thus it was not supported that the average female avoids competitive behaviour more than the average male. This suggests that observed gender differences might reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.

Leading competition professionals from around the world present reflections & forecasts on topical issues in antitrust. Nestled among the exchanges are insights into the professional paths of the women interviewed.

Investigates eight dimensions of competition which are active yet covert in the lives of managers. Explains in great detail the everyday experiences of men and women and the ways in which different cultures at work and in wider society, particularly exposure to sport and media, affect and reflect the relationship between gender and competition.

Catfight: Women and Competition is Leora Tanenbaum's dissection of the gender war waged among women. Tanenbaum meticulously analyzes the roots of destructive competitiveness among women, asserting that "catfights" thrive because, despite women's many gains, American women are conditioned to regard each other as adversaries rather than allies. She investigates the arenas-from diets to dating, from the boardroom to the delivery room- in which American women are apt to compare their lives with the lives of others in a tacit contest over who is the "better" woman, a contest in which no one wins. Throughout Catfight, Leora Tanenbaum puts her own life experiences under the lens of scrutiny. As a writer, a friend, a mother, a wife, and a daughter, she analyzes her own insecurities and background and how these influence her relations with other women. With the sociologist's perspective of a Barbara Ehrenreich and the feminist outrage of a Gloria Steinem, Tanenbaum demythologizes the age-old "catfight."

The groundbreaking classic that explores how women can and should negotiate for parity in their workplaces, homes, and beyond When Linda Babcock wanted to know why male graduate students were teaching their own courses while female students were always assigned as assistants, her dean said: "More men ask. The women just don't ask." Drawing on psychology, sociology, economics, and organizational behavior as well as dozens of interviews with men and women in different fields and at all stages in their careers, Women Don't Ask explores how our institutions, child-rearing practices, and implicit assumptions discourage women from asking for the opportunities and resources that they have earned and deserve—perpetuating inequalities that are fundamentally unfair and economically unsound. Women Don't Ask tells women how to ask, and why they should.

This book, which comprises eight chapters, presents a comprehensive critical survey of the results and methods of laboratory experiments in economics. The first chapter provides an introduction to experimental economics as a whole, with the remaining chapters providing surveys by leading practitioners in areas of economics that have seen a concentration of experiments: public goods, coordination problems, bargaining, industrial organization, asset markets, auctions, and individual decision making. The work aims both to help specialists set an agenda for future research and to provide nonspecialists with a critical review of work completed to date. Its focus is on elucidating the role of experimental studies as a progressive research tool so that wherever possible, emphasis is on series of experiments that build on one another. The contributors to the volume--Colin Camerer, Charles A. Holt, John H. Kagel, John O. Ledyard, Jack Ochs, Alvin E. Roth, and Shyam Sunder--adopt a particular methodological point of view: the way to learn how to design and conduct experiments is to consider how good experiments grow organically out of the issues and hypotheses they are designed to investigate.

Recent studies find that women are less competitive than men. This gender difference in competitiveness has been suggested as one possible explanation for why men occupy the majority of top positions in many sectors. In this study we explore competitiveness in children, with the premise that both context and gendered stereotypes regarding the task at hand may influence competitive behavior. A related field experiment on Israeli children shows that only boys react to competition by running faster when competing in a race. We here test if there is a gender gap in running among 7-10 year old Swedish children. We also introduce two female sports, skipping rope and dancing, to see if competitiveness is task dependent. We find no gender difference in reaction to competition in any task; boys and girls compete equally. Studies in different environments with different types of tasks are thus important in order to make generalizable claims about gender differences in competitiveness.