Gender Differences in Tournament-Performance Over Time in Single-sex and Mixed-sex Environments

We chart the evolution of gender differences in performance across single-sex and mixed-sex environments. Our dataset comprises over one million person-race observations of individuals making their racing debut over the period 1997–2012, and randomly assigned by the Japanese Speedboat Racing Association into single-sex and mixed-sex races. This randomization enables us to shed light on learning in races, and explore debut-racers’ performance as they gain experience. Key findings are; (1) Women are initially less skilled than men, (2) average debut-woman's performance improves faster than debut-men's, (3) after gaining racing experience, the gender gap in skill and performance disappears.