Do men really have greater socio-emotional skills than women? Evidence from Tanzanian youth

Policymakers recognize the importance of socio-emotional skills (SES) for workforce development. However, it is unclear if SES programming could be used to improve gender gaps in the labor force, and whether gender differences exist in these skills or returns to these skills. The answer may depend on how SES are measured. Few studies use measures beyond self-reports — or seek to measure SES granularly and rigorously in large samples, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This paper deploys novel sets of self-reported and behavioral measures of 14 SES in a sample of more than 4000 male and female youth not in full-time education, employment or training, in urban and peri-urban Tanzania. The findings show that the two measures are not highly correlated. Moreover, men score higher than women on all 12 positively-worded self-reported measures. In contrast, gender gaps in behavioral measures are only observed for a few skills, and are far smaller in magnitude. The paper provides suggestive correlational evidence that this pattern reflects men’s overestimation of their own skills, rather than women’s underestimation. In particular, there is a larger gap between self-reported and behavioral measures among men. Men’s self-reports, and the gap between their self-reported and behavioral measures, are strongly correlated with measures of social desirability and gendered beliefs about abilities — patterns not observed among women.