Students’ gender stereotypes about lecturers: evidence from an experimental study

Abstract

ABSTRACT We examine student gender stereotypes about lecturers at a Vietnamese university by asking students to choose between male and female lecturers for different courses. The gender stereotype ‘math-male’, ‘language-female’ is the consistent finding concerning gender stereotypes. More than 70% of students prefer a male lecturer for a mathematics course, while about 30% of students prefer a male lecturer for an English course. We find that students prefer a male lecturer for mathematics partly because they believe that male lecturers are more knowledgeable in mathematics than their female colleagues. On the other hand, students prefer female lecturers for English, not because they believe women have greater knowledge than men but because they are convinced that women have better language teaching skills. In gender stereotypes about lecturers, we do not find significant differences between male and female students.