Gender Differences in Tournament Performance Over Time: Can Women Catch-Up with Men?

We investigate the evolution over time of gender differences in single-sex and mixed-sex tournaments, using field data from the Japanese Speedboat Racing Association (JSRA). The JSRA randomly assigned individuals into single-sex and mixed-sex races, enabling us to model learning in different environments. Our dataset comprises over one million person-race observations of men and women making their speedboat racing debut between 1997 and 2012. We find that the average debut-woman's performance (measured by lane-changing and place-in-race) improves faster than debut-men's in single-sex races, but more slowly than debut-men's in mixed-sex races. For the average male racer, the opposite is true.