Stephanie El Khoury is a Ph.D. candidate at the W.P. Carey School of Business in the economics department. Originally from Lebanon, Khoury received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the American University of Beirut, both in economics. In 2020, she began her economics Ph.D. at ASU. Khoury, who's particularly interested in gender issues within education, focused her most recent project on gender bias between students and their professors. According to the International Institute for Management Development, gender bias is the "preferential treatment or discrimination against individuals based on their gender."
Khoury gathered most of her data from students in ASU's economics department. Gender bias in academia is common in many fields, but Khoury decided to focus on economics due to her expertise, her personal experience and the prevalence of gender bias in economics.
"I know a lot of people might be reluctant to admit it, because we cannot fix it, per se, but it is a fact that exists," Khoury said.
Through her initial research, she found a gap in the rating of male and female professors, with female professors consistently ranking lower across the economics departments from multiple universities. However, the gap didn't specify whether the ratings were due to gender bias, so she focused on that in her surveys.
She surveyed students by presenting them with two options of professors for the same course. Both options included a description from Rate My Professors, a website that allows students to review and rate professors and courses.
"I see how students are rating females and males by giving them videos," Khoury said. "I give them the same video, but one has a female voice and one has a male voice, and I see if they rate them differently — and females did have the penalty."
She then wanted to see if students still preferred male professors even if their class was more expensive. In another survey, she listed an expensive textbook for the male professor and a cheaper textbook for the female professor. The results showed that students were more willing to take a class with a poorly ranked male professor with a more expensive textbook.
Khoury's study found that spending time on Rate My Professors lowered students' views of their female professors. A potential reason for this could be confirmation bias, or the tendency to seek out information consistent with one's existing beliefs. Gender bias is subconscious, so it's likely that students are unknowingly resonating with negative reviews of female professors.
"Students who are exposed to these websites were more likely to report that females have lesser values than males," Khoury said. "They process this information, then they go to class and potentially they learn ... that females aren't as bad as they thought, but at the end of the day, these websites are giving them information and they internalize them."
The effects on female professors' careers
William Martin is an English instructor in the College of Arts and Sciences. Martin meets with other instructors and administration at the end of each semester to review course evaluations.
According to the University Office of Evaluation and Educational Effectiveness, these course evaluations are important because they allow faculty to "gain a better understanding of how well they are meeting the learning needs of students." In addition, departments use these course evaluations to review an instructor's teaching effectiveness, and these reviews "influence decisions about salary increases, contract renewals, and promotions."
Martin said he noticed gender bias in these evaluations, specifically in comments made toward female professors that go beyond their teaching styles and expectations.
"It's only from female colleagues where there is often a bit of consternation at the kinds of criticism they receive for, say appearance or what they wear," Martin said.
However, the English department has taken initiative to learn about bias and how to mitigate it. "There have been texts that we've been bringing in recently. ... Some of the more recent texts have really involved both individual and structural biases, thinking biases," Martin said. Other texts focus on gender, race and other kinds of unconscious biases.
While Khoury's research did not focus on course evaluations, she expressed concern about there being potential gender bias in these evaluations that can determine the livelihood of professors. Not only could gender bias impact their jobs, but it could also skew their self-worth.
"If you, as someone who is pouring your heart [into your] work, continuously receive harsher reviews than you deserve, you will feel demotivated. It becomes like
a self-fulfilling prophecy," Khoury said.
Course evaluations aren't unique to ASU. According to Watermark, there's an increasing number of higher education institutions administering course evaluations. At the same time, studies have found evidence of gender bias in course evaluations across universities. This can stem from selection bias — those with negative experiences are more likely to leave a review.
Diagnosing the problem
Sally Kitch, a women's and gender studies professor at the School of Social Transformation, has researched and written extensively about bias against women.
Kitch said there has always been a bias against women in academia, but in recent years, she has seen an increase.
Her approach to the issue is through a cultural lens. "The culture has inculcated the idea that women are weak, they're not as smart as men and that all they know are 'fluffy things' — they don't know hard science, they don't know math," Kitch said.
"We know that there have been some very powerful social media personalities — [Joe] Rogan is one name that comes to mind — not to mention a very competitive and hostile political environment where the talents of anybody who's not white and male have been called into question and that they're only there because there was some requirement to diversify the workforce," she said.
She believes young adults are hearing these conversations and internalizing them. "They have all these online resources telling them that women are stupid and men ought to be in control of them, that women are not only stupid but hateful and deserve violent responses, that they have no place in leadership and that real men control women. That message is out there, powerfully out there," she said.
Kitch said during her graduate years at the University of Chicago, students had great respect for professors. While they may have discussed difficult exams and assignments, their remarks never attacked the character of their professors. This is quite different from today, where students view the difficulty of a course based on their professor rather than the content or level of the course.
Concerned over the future job and career prospects for women, Kitch expressed the reach of the cultural and political environment into academia. "This is a scary time, and if I were [a young woman], I'd be a little scared about the implications of this because it can carry over into every area of life," she said.
Daniella Kemigisha, a sophomore studying digital marketing, said students seem to hold a preconception that male professors will be tough and hard on grades while female professors will coddle their students and be lenient on grades. "If [female professors] come off as a bit strict, then automatically everyone's like, 'We don't like her,' [but] compared to men, it's like it's already expected," she said.
As for Rate My Professors, Kemigisha feels that many students writing reviews don't even consider factors other than who the professor is. For example, instead of considering that the class may just be difficult, they may blame the female professor for the class's general rigor and leave a negative review.
Kitch is aware of the impact of Rate My Professors and said that although it was designed as a resource for students to get an understanding of professors, it's like social media. "What we know about social media is that it does not promote our better angels," she said. "It plays to the lowest levels of intellect and emotional maturity. It's become a completely useless tool."
Room for change
Khoury said diversity initiatives and trainings can combat the problem. According to the Oxford Review, awareness and recognition is the first step in bias correction. An experiment to measure the impacts of diversity training by the Harvard Business Review found that employees who they believed were the least supportive of women prior to a diversity training were more likely to acknowledge their discrimination against women and their gender biases after the training.
Unfortunately, there was little evidence on how the training affected later behavior, but the experiment did note that the training focused on gender bias had positive effects on employees' attitudes and behaviors toward racial minorities. Therefore, "helping people recognize biases towards one marginalized group of people can have positive spillover effects on their attitudes and behaviors towards other marginalized groups." Though awareness and recognition doesn't always lead to behavioral change, it's still an important step toward progress.
Khoury said since most of the bias in ratings and evaluations on female professors is done subconsciously, students are more likely to correct the bias once they learn of it. "I don't think they actually hate women," Khoury said. "If you give this information to students, they become more self-aware, and what ends up happening [is] ... they correct for the existence of the bias, and they give females a fair shot."
Edited by Savannah Dagupion, Leah Mesquita and Audrey Eagerton.
This story is part of The Contrast Issue, which was released on March 26, 2025. See the entire publicationhere.
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