Are women competitive enough to earn equal?

Labour MPs, from left, Ruth Dyson, Jacinda Adern, Annette King and Grant Robertson during the Equal Pay Day picnic on the front lawn at Parliament, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell

A recent study from Northwestern University, Columbia University and the University of Chicago claimed to show that women earn less money because they are less competitive.

Using a sample group of 400 individuals, researchers ran a math game where participants had to answer simple math questions.

The catch was they could opt for a steady payout of $4 per right answer or go for the tournament option where they were paid $16 for every correct answer if they were best in their group, otherwise they got nothing.

They study found that sixty per cent of the men opted for the competitive version of the game, compared to 33 per cent of women.

As the students from the study went on into their careers, they found a correlation between those who opted for the competitive option earning more while those who had chosen the steady payout went into jobs with a lower, steady income.

Therefore, women earn less because they are less competitive, right? Not so.

Bloomberg published a study last month showing that, while men did tend to go into more competitive and higher paying positions, their female counterparts in the same jobs still earned substantially less.

"In finance, for example, the typical woman took home $53,200 less than men. They were paid less with no regard to the jobs they held. Women in marketing at banks earned $7,000 less than men did. Women in investment banking netted $115,000 less than their male counterparts."

It seems no matter how competitive they are, women are still on the back foot.

- nzherald.co.nz