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

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender stereotypes
• gender
• student perceptions
• teaching evaluations

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D83
• I20

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank our editor David Peel, two anonymous reviewers from Applied Economics Letters, and Malcolm Elliot-Hogg for their very useful comments on this study. The study is funded by National Economics University, Hanoi, Vietnam. The authors are listed alphabetically.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Students were attending a wide range of courses before the experiments were implemented. Example lectures or courses were International Economics, International Law, Public Economics, Trade Economics, Financial Analysis, Public Finances, Foreign Economic Policy, Economy of ASEAN countries, International Economics, Business Administration, Commerce, Business Negotiations and Transactions, Economics, Business English, International Marketing.

² Mathematics for Economics is a course which teaches basic mathematics for students at National Economics University. This course covers basic knowledge of the mathematics that underlies economic theory, for example comparative statistics and optimization. English for Economics is an English course designed specifically for students of economics at the English-medium tertiary level. It helps students learn English terms and vocabulary in economics and business.

³ Because of limited space for this paper, the forms are not presented but can be provided on request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the National Economics University, Hanoi, Vietnam.