Reading the various posts on this topic over the past few days, I kept
having a vague recollection of having seen some relevant research back in the
'70's. Finally, my curiosity got the better of me, so I browsed through a
couple of volumes of the Psychology of Women Quarterly and found the article I
think I was remembering - please note the qualifier I have used! :)
The article, by Ellen Kaschak, is "Sex Bias in Student Evaluations of
College Professors," and it appeared in 1978, Vol. 2 (3), pp. 235-243, of
PWQ. I'll quote the abstract (p. 235):
"Fifty male and 50 female students were asked to evaluate the teaching
methods of three male and three female professors in two traditionally male,
two traditionally female, and two relatively non-se-linked fields. Each
method was attributed to a male professor on one form and a female on
another. A descriptive paragraph for each of the six areas was followed by
six bipolar ratings scales. The different ratings assigned as a function of
the sex of student and professor are discussed in relation to previous
findings."
Since the abstract isn't completely clear about either method or results,
let me add a little, and then if any of you want to know more, you can check
the original article. The method here involved having participants read a
paragraph that described "the teaching practices and methods of six
professors, two in traditionally male fields (business administration and
chemistry), two in traditionally female fields (home economics and elementary
education), and two in relatively non-sex-linked areas (psychology and
history)......Three of the professors have (sic) female names and three male.
Order was alternated and the sex of professor condition balanced by the use of
two forms. For example, the first method described was attributed to Dr. Ann
Kent in Form A and to Dr. Arthur Kent in Form B" (p. 239).
Student participants were asked to rate the techniques and methods on six
bipolar scales, effective-ineffective, concerned-unconcerned, likeable-not
likeable, powerful-powerless, excellent-poor, and definitely would-would not
take course. Results indicated, first, that "the particular academic area
described did not affect the ratings of professors by female or by male
students" (p. 240), and also some signficant findings for sex of student, some
for sex of prof, and some for the sex of student by sex of professor
interaction. "Inspection of the mean ratings for male and female professors
by male and female students indicated that female students rated professors
equally, while male students assigned higher ratings to male than to female
professors on the effective-ineffective, concerned-unconcerned, likeable-not
likeable, and excellent-poor scales...regardless of field. On the scale
assessing power, male and female students rated male professors higher. On
the final scale, would-would not take the course.....female students rated
female professors significantly more favorably than male professors,
indicating that despite their previous ratings, they would prefer to take the
courses described from a female professor" (pp. 240-241).
In the discussion, the author notes that "sex, which would be an entirely
irrelevant variable, seemed to be the crucial one on which faculty members
were evaluated by male students" (p. 241).
Of course, there are lots of caveats to keep in mind here; in the first
place, the data are more than 20 years old, and also the study didn't look at
whether male and female students BEHAVED differently toward male and female
professors, just at how they rated descriptions of hypothetical professors.
But I thought some TIPS-folks might be interested in a little data on the
subject, since the topic of this thread seems to have sparked more traffic
than some other topics. If male students perceive the same behavior
differently when it is attributed to a male prof than when it is attributed to
a female prof, then it seems reasonable to me to hypothesize that perhaps
students (male students?) treat their male and female prof's differently. I
don't recall having seen more recent research addressing this issue, but when
I have some time, I might do a little more browsing to see what I can find.
Retta
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