Do Role Models Matter in Large Classes? New Evidence on Gender Match Effects in Higher Education

Stephan Maurer, Guido Schwerdt () and Simon Wiederhold ()
Additional contact information
Guido Schwerdt: University of Konstanz

No 15860, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study whether female students benefit from being taught by female professors, and whether such gender match effects differ by class size. We use administrative records of a German public university, covering all programs and courses between 2006 and 2018. We find that gender match effects on student performance are sizable in smaller classes, but do not exist in larger classes. This difference suggests that direct and frequent interactions between students and professors are important for the emergence of gender match effects. Instead, the mere fact that one's professor is female is not sufficient to increase performance of female students.

Keywords: gender gap; role models; tertiary education; professors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 I24 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2023-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-gen, nep-hrm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15860.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Do role models matter in large classes? New evidence on gender match effects in higher education (2023)
Working Paper: Do Role Models Matter in Large Classes? New Evidence on Gender Match Effects in Higher Education (2023)
Working Paper: Do role models matter in large classes? New evidence on gender match effects in higher education (2023)
Working Paper: Do role models matter in large classes? New evidence on gender match effects in higher education (2023)
Working Paper: Do role models matter in large classes? New evidence on gender match effects in higher education (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15860

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().