Sex of Student and Instructor: A Study of Student Bias

This study explores the posibility that women sabotage themselves by a collective antiwoman bias, as alleged in Goldberg's widely cited conclusion that women are prejudiced against women professionals. With 1,291 college students as respondents, this study hypothesized that men are more likely than women to show bias against women teachers or scholars. When former college teachers were evaluated, men students ranked women less favorably than men, but women students ranked men less favorably than women. Although a substantial minority of students had no sex preference for instructor in any size of class, among those who did, more preferred men teachers than women, and the larger the class, the greater was the preference for a man teacher. Men were slightly more likely than women to agree with an opinion attributed to a scholar of the same sex. This study fails to support Goldberg's conclusion and points out the need for replication.