 Are students really biased against female professors? — Experimental evidence from IndiaPuneet Arora and Moumita Roy Journal of Development Economics, 2025, vol. 172, issue C Abstract: We investigate the presence of gender bias in student evaluations of teaching (SETs) in India using a natural field experiment. In the first two treatments, we randomly assigned 504 students to attend an identical audio–visual lecture, manipulating the perceived gender of the professor. In two subsequent treatments, we provide additional information about the professors’ credentials to signal their competence. When we vary the perceived gender, on average, we do not find any significant differences in SETs received by female and male professors. However, the perceived-female professor receives higher SETs on average in treatments with additional information. Further, we find that in-group bias can be a potential channel to explain our results. Our findings highlight the context-dependent nature of gender bias in SETs and provide evidence of the differential impact of information by gender. Keywords: Teaching evaluation; Teaching effectiveness; Gender bias; Discrimination; India; Field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:172:y:2025:i:c:s0304387824001111 DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103362 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier |
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