Quelle: Journal of the European Economic Association, 17 (2019) 2, S 535–566
Inhalt: This paper provides new evidence on gender bias in teaching evaluations. We exploit a quasi-experimental dataset of 19,952 student evaluations of university faculty in a context where students are randomly allocated to female or male instructors. Despite the fact that neither students’ grades nor self-study hours are affected by the instructor’s gender, we find that women receive systematically lower teaching evaluations than their male colleagues. This bias is driven by male students’ evaluations, is larger for mathematical courses, and particularly pronounced for junior women. The gender bias in teaching evaluations we document may have direct as well as indirect effects on the career progression of women by affecting junior women’s confidence and through the reallocation of instructor resources away from research and toward teaching. (JEL: J16, J71, I23, J45)
Schlagwörter:Diskriminierung; gender bias; Lehrevaluation; Student; Studium
CEWS Kategorie:Studium und Studierende, Geschlechterverhältnis
Social or Economic Goals? The Professional Goal Orientation of Students Enrolled in STEM and Non-STEM Majors in University
Autor/in:
Wolter, Ilka; Ehrtmann, Lisa; Seidel, Tina; Drechsel, Barbara
Quelle: Front. Psychol. (Frontiers in Psychology), 10 (2019)
Inhalt: Various studies try to disentangle the gender-specific competencies or decisions that lead to a career in a STEM field and try to find a way to encourage more women to pursue this kind of career. The present study examines differences in the meaning of work (i.e., their professional goal orientation) of students who are enrolled in STEM or non-STEM programs in tertiary education. Based on the background that gender stereotypes associate women and men with communal or agentic roles respectively, we expected that women in STEM subjects differ in their professional goal orientation from women in non-STEM programs. More precisely, women who are enrolled in a STEM major are expected to be less oriented to social and communal goal orientations than women in non-STEM university programs. In a sample of 5857 second year university students of the German National Educational Panel Study three profiles of professional goal orientation were confirmed in a latent profile analysis. As expected, women were more oriented towards social aspects of occupations, whereas men more likely belonged to a profile with high importance for economic aspects of occupations. Moreover, students enrolled in STEM programs more likely belonged to the profile of economic goal orientation. There was, however, no interaction of gender and STEM program: Women in STEM fields did not differ in their occupational goal orientation from women enrolled in non-STEM programs. Based on these findings and on a goal congruity perspective, future interventions aiming at overcoming the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields should consider the individual meaning of work and the goals that are associated with STEM occupations.
Quelle: Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (IZA); Bonn (IZA research report, 87), 2019.
Inhalt: The misrepresentation of females among STEM graduates is believed to be an important driver behind the gender gap in labor market success. While barriers to entry into STEM for female students have gained strong attention by education researchers, subsequent gender differences in the persistence of pursuing STEM studies are less well understood. In this research note, we quantify the gender gap in dropout out of STEM using a representative student survey in Germany and apply a descriptive decomposition technique to differentiate between gender differences driven by differences in observed characteristics and behavioral differences. Our results point to a significant gap in dropout rates that cannot be explained by observable characteristics. Rather, female students in STEM appear to be positively selected in terms of the study capital, yet display higher dropout rates than their male counterparts. We discuss potential behavioral explanations and provide recommendations for policy interventions." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku).
Quelle: Front. Sociol. (Frontiers in Sociology), 4 (2019) , 26 S
Inhalt: Research and popular debate on female underrepresentation in academia has focused on STEM fields. But recent work has offered a unifying explanation for gender representation across the STEM/nonSTEM divide. This proposed explanation, called the fieldspecific ability beliefs (FAB) hypothesis, postulates that, in combination with pervasive stereotypes that link men but not women with intellectual talent, academics perpetuate female underrepresentation by transmitting to students in earlier stages of education their beliefs about how much intellectual talent is required for success in each academic field. This theory was supported by a national survey which found that the disciplines with the fewest women had practitioners who were most likely to think that success in their field requires [talent]/[brilliance]. We test this topdown schema with a nationwide survey of U.S. undergraduates, assessing the extent to which undergraduate beliefs about talent in academia mirror those of academics. We find no evidence that academics transmit their beliefs to undergraduates. We also use a second survey – identical to the first but with each field’s gender ratio provided as added information – to explicitly test the relationship between undergraduate beliefs about gender and talent in academia. The results for this second survey suggest that the extent to which undergraduates rate brilliance as essential to success in an academic field is highly sensitive to this added information for nonSTEM fields, but not STEM fields. Overall, our study offers evidence that, contrary to FAB hypothesis, the STEM/nonSTEM divide principally shapes undergraduate beliefs about both gender and talent in academia.
Schlagwörter:Fächerwahl; Frauen in der Wissenschaft; gender bias; Gender stereotype; Geschlechterstereotyp; MINT; non-STEM divide; quantitative Analyse; STEM; Stereotyp; talent; Underrepresentation of women; Unterrepräsentanz; women in science
CEWS Kategorie:Studium und Studierende, Naturwissenschaft und Technik, Geschlechterverhältnis
Mitigating gender bias in student evaluations of teaching
Autor/in:
Peterson, David A. M.; Biederman, Lori A.; Andersen, David; Ditonto, Tessa M.; Roe, Kevin
Quelle: PLoS ONE, 14 (2019) 5
Inhalt: Student evaluations of teaching are widely believed to contain gender bias. In this study, we conduct a randomized experiment with the student evaluations of teaching in four classes with large enrollments, two taught by male instructors and two taught by female instructors. In each of the courses, students were randomly assigned to either receive the standard evaluation instrument or the same instrument with language intended to reduce gender bias. Students in the anti-bias language condition had significantly higher rankings of female instructors than students in the standard treatment. There were no differences between treatment groups for male instructors. These results indicate that a relatively simple intervention in language can potentially mitigate gender bias in student evaluation of teaching.
Schlagwörter:gender bias; Gleichstellungsmaßnahmen; Lehrevaluation; Sprache
CEWS Kategorie:Studium und Studierende, Geschlechterverhältnis
Inhalt: We examine the dramatic expansion in the Turkish higher education system during 2006-2008, which resulted in the establishment of 41 new public universities and a 60% increase in the number of available slots. Using the variation in the exposure intensity of expansion across cohorts and regions, we estimate the causal effect of the expansion on overall attainment and the gender gap in higher education. Before the expansion, women had lower higher education rates. The expansion increased the attainment rates of both men and women but failed to reduce the gender gap. Comparing the scale of expansion across fields of study, we observe that the largest growth in available slots was in social sciences and engineering. The expansion of slots in social sciences benefited men and women evenly, but the expansion in engineering benefited men more than women, thereby raising the gender gap.
Intersektionalität im Hochschulbereich: In welchen Bildungsphasen bestehen soziale Ungleichheiten nach Migrationshintergrund, Geschlecht und sozialer Herkunft – und inwieweit zeigen sich Interaktionseffekte?
Autor/in:
Lörz, Markus
Quelle: Z Erziehungswiss (Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft), 22 (2019) 1, S 101–124
Inhalt: Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, inwieweit zwischen Abitur und Hochschulabschluss soziale Ungleichheiten bestehen und inwieweit sich Interaktionseffekte nach Geschlecht, sozialer Herkunft und Migrationshintergrund zeigen? Hierbei wird eine intersektionale Perspektive eingenommen und zwischen additiven und multiplikativen Effekten unterschieden. Die theoretischen Erwartungen werden auf Basis des Studienberechtigtenpanels 2010 (2015) getestet. Anhand logistischer Regression wird ersichtlich, dass sowohl additive als auch multiplikative Effekte sozialer Ungleichheit im Hochschulbereich bestehen. Diese sozialen Ungleichheiten unterscheiden sich jedoch erheblich in ihrem Ausmaß und bezüglich der Bildungsphase, in der diese zur Geltung kommen.