Risk and Gender

Last month, I gave figures for opinions on a question that was asked in several European nations in 1989 and in the United States a couple of years later: "In general, how would you most prefer to be paid--on a fixed salary basis, so that you always know how much you will earn--or mostly on an incentive basis which will allow you to earn more if you accomplish a lot, but may result in less earnings if you don't accomplish enough."  Europeans were generally more likely to prefer a fixed salary.  In response to a request, here are the figures for men and women separately:

                          Men choosing                 Women choosing                   Difference
                          Salary                                 Salary    

US                       35%                                   48%                                13%
France                  67%                                  75%                                   8%
Britain                   58%                                  75%                                17%
Spain                    70%                                  76%                                  6%
W. Germany           78%                                  83%                                  5%
E. Germany           57%                                  70%                                 13%
Italy                       31%                                 69%                                  38%

In every nation, women are more likely to prefer a salary.  The largest "gender gap" is in Italy, but I'm suspicious of the figures for that country, as I mentioned in a previous post.  The differences could reflect gender differences in basic attitudes towards risk, but it's also possible that men are more used to working in jobs with incentive payments (which is more common in sales an factory work).