Do Men Really Have Greater Socio-Emotional Skills than Women? Evidence from Tanzanian Youth

Rachel Cassidy, IFC
Smita Das, World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab/Innovations for Poverty Action
Clara Delavallade, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Elijah Kipchumba, University of Dublin
Julietha Komba, BRAC

Individuals’ socio-emotional skills (SES) and their perceptions of their own SES both matter for labor market outcomes, as well as for other economic and welfare outcomes. Men appear to have higher levels of SES than women, but few studies use measures beyond self-reports, especially in low-income countries. We deploy novel sets of self-reported and behavioral measures of 14 SES among over 4,000 male and female youth not in full-time education, employment or training (NEET), in Tanzania. We find that men score higher than women in self-reported measures and that self-reports are strongly correlated with social desirability, cognitive ability, and internalized gender norms. Gender gaps on behavioral measures are only observed for a limited number of skills and smaller in magnitude. There is a larger gap between self-reported and behavioral measures among men, and we provide suggestive evidence that this reflects men’s overestimation of their own skills, rather than women’s underestimation.