Gender bias in education

Anti-bias interventions do not always have the desired effect and can even backfire. Research on the psychology of morality shows that confronting people with evidence of their own (group's) biases can trigger a threatening (psychophysiological) response. In a study focused on gender bias in teacher evaluations, 101 students (71.3% female) were confronted with evidence of bias in these evaluations. The findings provide valuable insights for designing more effective interventions.

Read the full article here

Female professors are rated lower by students than male professors. The study by Buser, Batz-Barich and Hayter (2022) found that when students were asked to rate their professor, female professors were rated lower than their male fellow professors on all aspects. Moreover, fewer students were willing to recommend female professors or courses taught by women.

Read the op blog post about this article on SPSP's website here: https://spsp.org/news/character-and-context-blog/buser-recommending-female-instructors

Buser, W., Batz-Barbarich, C. L., & Hayter, J. K. (2022). Evaluation of women in economics: Evidence of gender bias following behavioral role violations. Sex Roles, 86(11), 695-710. 

Students evaluate the teaching of professors lower after receiving a bad grade than after receiving a good grade. However, after a bad grade they also show a gender bias: the course of a male professor is evaluated more positively than that of a female professor. Self-affirmations reduce this gender bias.

Hoorens, V., Dekkers, G., & Deschrijver, E. (2020). Gender bias in student evaluations of teaching: Students’ self-affirmation reduces the bias by lowering evaluations of male professors. Sex Roles, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-020-01148-8

Female professors in high status domains (e.g. economics, compute science) appear to experience more backlash than female professors in lower status domains (e.g. philosophy, history) and this is even worse for women without a “chili pepper rating” from RateMyProfessors.com. Read the full paper here.

Fisher, A. N., Stinson, D. A., & Kalajdzic, A. (2019). Unpacking backlash: Individual and contextual moderators of bias against female professors. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 41, 305-325. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2019.1652178

El-Alayli, A., Hansen-Brown, A. A., & Ceynar, M. (2018). Dancing backwards in high heels: Female professors experience more work demands and special favor requests, particularly from academically entitled students. Sex Roles, 79, 136-150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0872-6

Read the newsletter (in Dutch) "Genderbias in teaching" of 18 september 2017