Abstract
Women are often underrepresented and underpaid in various sectors of the labor market. Numerous studies suggest that the gender confidence gap may influence the "supply" of women, affecting their participation in the workforce. For instance, this gap can lead to women having lower salary expectations, being less likely to pursue competitive fields, being less vocal, and being less inclined to apply for challenging roles. However, there is less understanding of how this confidence gap impacts the "demand" side, which includes how employers perceive and value female employees. If this confidence gap is "contagious" from workers to employers, it could lead to more negative beliefs about women, contributing to poorer outcomes for them and exacerbating gender discrimination. In this study, we revisit an experiment by Exley and Nielsen (2024), which examined the transmission of the confidence gap from female workers to evaluators, such as employers, colleagues, and peers. We test the robustness of these findings using a new sample from China and introduce a new attention intervention to explore the issue of attention in belief updating.