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Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations

Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations This paper provides new evidence on gender bias in teaching evaluations. We exploit a quasi-experimental dataset of 19,952 student evaluations of university faculty in a context where students are randomly allocated to female or male instructors. Despite the fact that neither students’ grades nor self-study hours are affected by the instructor’s gender, we find that women receive systematically lower teaching evaluations than their male colleagues. This bias is driven by male students’ evaluations, is larger for mathematical courses, and particularly pronounced for junior women. The gender bias in teaching evaluations we document may have direct as well as indirect effects on the career progression of women by affecting junior women’s confidence and through the reallocation of instructor resources away from research and toward teaching. (JEL: J16, J71, I23, J45) http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of the European Economic Association Oxford University Press

Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations

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Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of European Economic Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
ISSN
1542-4766
eISSN
1542-4774
DOI
10.1093/jeea/jvx057
Publisher site
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Abstract

This paper provides new evidence on gender bias in teaching evaluations. We exploit a quasi-experimental dataset of 19,952 student evaluations of university faculty in a context where students are randomly allocated to female or male instructors. Despite the fact that neither students’ grades nor self-study hours are affected by the instructor’s gender, we find that women receive systematically lower teaching evaluations than their male colleagues. This bias is driven by male students’ evaluations, is larger for mathematical courses, and particularly pronounced for junior women. The gender bias in teaching evaluations we document may have direct as well as indirect effects on the career progression of women by affecting junior women’s confidence and through the reallocation of instructor resources away from research and toward teaching. (JEL: J16, J71, I23, J45)

Journal

Journal of the European Economic Association – Oxford University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2019

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