Does prize sharing close the gender-based gap of competition in Nepal?

Past research has shown that even when women performequally as men, they are less competitive when cash is provided asincentive. Using the experimental design of Cassar and Rigdon(2021), where in a real effort tournament a social incentivemotivates women to compete more and closes the gender gap incompetitiveness, we examine if this will be found in a Nepalsample. Following the evolutionary literature that suggests womenneed each other’s support for child care, participants are given anoption to share the prize they win to help them earn friendships andbonds in a competitive game. Our results show that the gender gapin competition still exists with the prize-sharing option but the gapcloses when women are mothers. Women are significantly morewilling to enter competition when they have children. This couldbe to better provide for their children and also, an increasedfinancial responsibility of child care encouraging them to competemore