Contradicting findings of gender bias in teaching evaluations: evidence from two experiments in Denmark

Abstract

A series of studies have found gender bias in student evaluations of teaching. Evidence from several observational studies show that women are evaluated lower than men. These findings are supported by experimental studies aimed at isolating the effect of a possible gender bias from other differences between male and female teachers. In this paper, we conduct two experiments in Denmark to test whether a similar gender bias is present in a national context that is generally considered among the most gender equal. Study one investigates differences in the evaluation of two similar presentations by teachers reported to be either male or female. Study two focuses on the evaluation of teaching material prepared by teachers presented as men and women respectively. The two studies arrive at similar conclusions: There is no gender bias in favor of men in the evaluations made by students. The paper discusses the implications of these findings.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2022.2048355 .

Keywords:

• Teaching evaluations
• gender bias
• experiments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This project was funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark, grant no. 8108-00034B. The authors wish to thank the following colleagues who have kindly helped us prepare the experiment material and assisted in recruiting participants: Kim Mannemar Sønderskov, Mathias Tromborg, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Troels Bøggild and Morten Jakobsen.