ANU has flagged research being done on Essex Girls by their Professor Alison Booth.
Professor Booth said the results showed risk-taking in women came down to social learning and environmental factors, rather than inherent gender traits.
“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,” said Professor Booth.
“We found that on average women are less likely to make risky choices than men at both dates. 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. It was also interesting to note that the risk-taking behaviour of men was unaffected by group composition.
“Women, even those endowed with an intrinsic propensity to make riskier choices, may be discouraged from doing so because they are inhibited by culturally-driven norms and beliefs about the appropriate mode of female behaviour-avoiding risk. But once they are placed in an all-female environment, this inhibition is reduced.”
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