Willingness to engage in competitive behaviour is important in the context of labour markets, where competition is likely to be higher (in general) for high-profile or well-remunerated jobs. This research might have important considerations from a policy perspective when designing programmes to promote competition in the workplace. Namely, when is the right time to intervene?

It might be possible to have greater impacts on outcomes later in life by targeting intervention from a very early age (pre-three years old) to boost the willingness to compete amongst females. However, this implies that the impact of nature and nurture are more balanced before the age of three (as there are no studies into competitive behaviour at such a young age, it is difficult to know).

Of course, if willingness to compete is largely innate, then it may not matter too much at what stage any interventions occur and, on balance, programmes are likely to have greater impacts if they focus on reducing competitiveness in the labour market to encourage wider participation amongst females.

On a broader, normative point – if we accept there are differences in willingness to compete given gender, then I’m not sure which course of action is more preferable – encouraging females to be more competitive, or making labour markets less competitive? Thoughts welcome…