Gender Stereotypes in Professor-Student Interactions

Abstract

While third-party evaluators' gender biases have been shown to exacerbate labor market inequities, the role of gender stereotypes in subtly shaping interactions between students and their teachers and mentors remains largely unexplored outside of laboratories. In this study, I analyze a novel dataset of more than 1.2 million student evaluations written by UC Santa Cruz professors spanning 1965-1979 and 1999-2009, combined with detailed student transcript records, to identify professors' gender stereotypes and estimate their impact on students' educational decisions. I estimate each evaluation's genderedness by comparing the adjectives and adverbs used to describe different-gendered students who received the same letter grade in the same class, and characterize professors by the degree to which they tend to employ more male- and female-valence vocabulary in describing male and female students (G). I then exploit plausibly-random professor assignments to students' first-quarter courses to quantify small but precisely-estimated effects of high-G professors on their students: students who take courses with high-G professors become more likely to take additional courses with that professor, take more courses in that field, and are more likely to earn a major in that field. These findings are highly robust to alternative specifications; persist in the presence of additional covariates measuring professors' gender, evaluative positivity, explicit gender bias, and attentiveness to students; and exhibit minimal heterogeneity by discipline, time, or other characteristics. The results suggest that both male and female students are encouraged by teachers whose presentation of constructive feedback adapts to the student's gender.