Women tend to take more risks at the workplace when they are in the company of other women, suggests a new study.
Alison Booth, researcher at the Australian National University (ANU), tested whether single-sex classrooms in co-educational environments altered students' risk-taking attitudes.
"Given that risk attitudes can be shaped by the environment, changing the educational or training context could help address under-representation of women in certain areas," to a university statement quoted Booth as saying.
"This is why these findings are important. They show that risk-taking behaviour is not necessarily innate - it can be affected by the environment in which the individual is placed," she said.
"We designed a controlled experiment using first-year university students who made choices over real-stakes lotteries at two different dates. Students were randomly assigned to classes of three types: all female, all male, and co-educational. They were not allowed to change group subsequently. We found that on average women are less likely to make risky choices than men at both dates," said Booth.
{{/usCountry}}"We designed a controlled experiment using first-year university students who made choices over real-stakes lotteries at two different dates. Students were randomly assigned to classes of three types: all female, all male, and co-educational. They were not allowed to change group subsequently. We found that on average women are less likely to make risky choices than men at both dates," said Booth.
{{/usCountry}}However, after eight weeks in a single-sex environment, women were significantly more likely to choose the lottery than their counterparts in co-educational groups. Indeed, by week eight women in all-female groups behaved in a similar way to men.