We study the relationship between gender, willingness to compete and career choices in a setting that includes individuals from the whole ability distribution and career options covering the whole range of skill requirements. We collect incentivized experimental choices from more than 1500 Swiss lower-secondary school students and relate them to their choice of post-compulsory education. This enables us to investigate two novel questions: 1. How does the gender gap in willingness to compete vary with ability? 2. Can willingness to compete predict choices between career options that cover the whole
range of skill requirements, including choices between different types of vocational education and the choice between vocational and academic education? Our main results are: 1. The gender gap in willingness to compete is small among the lowest-ability students, but increases steadily with ability and is largest for the highest-ability students. 2. Willingness to compete predicts choices both of academic specializations and of vocational careers. Finally, we combine these two results to analyze their implications for our understanding of gender differences in career choices at different skill requirement levels.