Why I Talk to My Students Every Semester About Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations

On rotation, I teach a graduate-level course entitled “Introduction to Early Christian Thought.” And every year — in the week of course evaluations — I have a conversation with my students that has become an important feature of their education: a conversation about how teaching evaluations are gendered.

Once you’ve seen the pattern, you can’t unsee it. Men are routinely described as “brilliant,” “authoritative,” or “the best lecturer I’ve ever had.” Women, by contrast, are “kind,” “caring,” “approachable,” “compassionate,” or “pastoral.” Men “really know their stuff.” Women “really care about students.” Expertise attaches to men; emotional labour attaches to women.

The same holds for grading. Students often expect women to be gentler, more flexible, more indulgent. A male lecturer who grades firmly is “rigorous” or “serious.” A woman who does the same may quickly become “harsh” or “unfair.”

Having taught in three different academic institutions over the past decade, I have several examples which have made this very clear. I’ll mention just one here: a student received a B from me and a B from a male colleague. The student challenged my grade — not his. Same work, same outcome, different reaction. Nearly every woman in academia has a version of this story.

I speak openly with my students, then, about gender bias before they write evaluations. Not because I want to avoid critique — I value thoughtful critique — but because evaluations stick. Many evaluations I receive are positive and thoughtful. Some are wonderfully memorable. My personal favourite is “Professor Thomas is a badass.” But, it is hard to forget that I “grade like a man.”

Research

Recent work in higher-education research confirms what many women have long observed:

• A large-scale experimental study found that female instructors receive significantly lower evaluations than male instructors for identical teaching, even when students never interact with the instructor in person (MacNell, Driscoll & Hunt, Innovative Higher Education, 2015).

• A 2025 analysis using natural-language processing on tens of thousands of comments showed that men are more frequently praised for “competence” and “authority,” while women receive comments about warmth and personality, regardless of teaching quality (Zamora & Ayllón, 2025).

• A comprehensive review argues that student evaluations often reflect biases — including gender — more than they reflect actual learning or teaching effectiveness (Uttl, White & Gonzalez, Studies in Educational Evaluation, 2017).

These are not small effects; they are systemic patterns.

What I Ask of My Students

So I ask students to pause before they complete an evaluation and consider a few questions:

• Am I using different language for a woman than I would for a man?

• Am I expecting more emotional labour — more nurturing, more availability — from this instructor?

• Am I reacting to discomfort about standards or grades by labelling them “unfair”?

• Am I evaluating teaching, or evaluating whether this lecturer fits my image of what authority looks like?

Honest evaluations are essential. Students should say what worked, what didn’t, what could be clearer or more engaging. But fairness requires noticing our assumptions. It asks us to evaluate teaching rather than gender stereotypes.

If we care about justice and equity in higher education, one simple starting point is here: noticing the words we use, the labels we reach for, and the people we instinctively challenge first.

Notes & Bibliography

MacNell, L., Driscoll, A., & Hunt, A. N. (2015). “What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching.” Innovative Higher Education, 40, 291–303.
Uttl, B., White, C. A., & Gonzalez, D. (2017). “Meta-analysis of faculty gender and teaching evaluations.” Studies in Educational Evaluation, 54, 22–42.
Zamora, C., & Ayllón, S. (2025). “Gender Bias in Qualitative Course Evaluations: Evidence from NLP Methods.” (Open-access working paper).