Researcher Questions Whether Women More Risk-Averse Than Men

by Susanna Kim

ABC News
September 30, 2012

While previous academic research has shown women to be less willing to engage in risk than men in situations like gambling, a new economics paper released this week finds men can be just as risk-averse, if not more.

Julie Nelson, chairwoman of the economics department at University of Massachusetts-Boston, wrote “Are Women Really More Risk-Averse Than Men?” as a working paper this week.

Julie A. Nelson

“The paper finds a lot of the economics and finance research in behavioral differences between men and women is vastly exaggerated,” Nelson said.

Nelson and a research assistant reviewed more than 24 published articles about the subject, many of which studied men and women’s gambling habits and often concluded that women were less willing to gamble.

“My paper goes over the literature and says ‘not so fast,’” she said.

Nelson often found small differences in the averages of the two genders that measured how willing they were to take risks.

“Academic articles hide that there is a lot of overlap between men and women,” Nelson said.

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