Who Is Biased? Heterogeneity in Gender Bias in Evaluations

Key Points

• This research aims to understand the presence and sources of gender bias in student evaluations of teaching.
• Scraped instructor data from RateMyProfessor.com to document gender gap in evaluations.
• Conducted a randomized experiment with identical teaching content delivered in male and female voice-overs.
• Analyzed the evaluations from students to measure the impact of gender on ratings.
• Identified a causal gender penalty of approximately 0.11 points on a 1–5 scale for female voice-overs.
• The bias was predominantly observed among students who actively post online reviews.
• Findings suggest bias originates primarily from a specific subset of reviewers rather than the entire student population.