Comparison of risk-taking behaviours among man and women in competitive examinations

Abstract

It is an often-asked question as to why do woman students not fare as well in competitive examinations for admission to colleges as male students when they perform better in non-competitive board examinations almost every time. This was also confirmed by a paper by Ors, Palomino and Peyrache[1] which compared the performance of students in their high school examination and their competitive exam admission test for HEC Paris. The results showed that the women did much better in the high school exam than in the admission test. However, no reason was given for that. Our hypothesis is that one of the reasons behind this difference between performance in competitive examinations and non-competitive examinations is that woman students tend to be more risk-averse than male students. To answer this question, an experiment was carried out in a local college where students were given a test with multiple choice questions. The gender of the student was noted and the students’ performance in the test was evaluated. The results showed that there was a higher incidence of risk-taking among male students than female students. This may partially explain the reason why male students tend to do better than female students in competitive examinations.