Gender bias in student evaluation of teaching among undergraduate business students

Abstract

While half of undergraduate students in business are women, only one in five full professors in business in the US are female. According to the pipeline theory, this discrepancy should correct itself through time and more women join the ranks of full professors. However, the pipeline seems to leak, as the adjustment is slow. Student evaluations of teaching (SET) is one of the measures used to evaluate faculty. If there is a gender bias in student evaluations, where female faculty is valued less than male faculty, this could contribute to the leaky pipeline by reducing women’s promotion possibilities. Looking at student evaluations among undergraduate business students at an Icelandic university in 127 courses from 2010 to 2015, I estimate the difference between SET for male and female faculty, using random-effects ordered logit regressions. I find that female faculty receive lower evaluations than male faculty in a simple model. In a model linking each of the covariates with gender I find an even greater gender bias for full-time faculty, while female part-time instructors receive higher SET than their male counterparts.