Due to the lower scores female teachers make eleven percent less chance to rise to become senior lecturer than male teachers, the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam states.
The research studied 650 course evaluations of 272 courses in total. These were all courses, given by the ISS, where men as well as woman gave class. The institution has a lot of students from developing countries and ‘countries in transition’, but a lower score for female teachers was also previously shown in multiple studies with western students.
The researchers have corrected the results for varying effects. For example the course instructor received higher marks than other teachers, but also if they correct for this, the difference cannot be explained. The same goes for age. And also the scientific knowledge of the teacher (the impact of their publications) does not change the result. To be sure the researchers looked whether outliers above (really good male teachers) or below (really bad female teachers) biased the outcome, but they did not.
The researchers could not see if female students judged differently than males, because the evaluations were filled in anonymously. It was however remarkable that for courses about gender the assessment of the teachers was not influenced by gender. ‘Which suggests that students can be made sensitive to gender issues’, according to the author of the publication.
Moreover, it was found that the ethnicity of the teacher had no influence on the outcome of the evaluations. Students are thus sexist, but not racist.
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