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In this study we analyze the extent of gender stereotypes in student evaluations of college professors on the internet site MisProfesores.com in Mexico. We downloaded more than 600,000 evaluations for the period 2008–18. The evaluations include three scores on a scale of 0 to 10: how easy it is to obtain a good grade, how much the professor helps his or her students obtain good grades, and how clearly the professor presents the concepts of the course. The site also allows students to comment on the professor and the class, and we performed a quantitative text analysis of these comments. We found that women receive lower scores than their male counterparts, although the difference is relatively small: 1–2% of a standard deviation. Students refer more to the appearance and personality of female professors, and describe them more often as "bad" or "strict." They also refer to women in less respectful terms, calling them " maestra " ("teacher"), but calling men " profesor " or " licenciado " (the title corresponding to their academic degree), and they use less positive language for women ("good" vs. "great" or "excellent" for men). Finally, words associated with qualities of service (traditionally stereotyped as feminine) favor women more than men; whereas, words with traditionally masculine associations have a negative impact on women's evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's representation at the top is still an issue on the agenda for equality. In this paper, we contribute to the literature on the effect of female application reviewers on the performance of women in selection processes. We define gender bias as any differential treatment of female and male applicants. We are particularly interested in whether the gender of the evaluator plays a role in this bias. Using a unique dataset from Mexico, we exploit the fact that applicants cannot select their evaluators and vice versa, that the gender composition of the reviewers chosen is unknown to individual evaluators, and that information is available on the scoring of different aspects of the application. Even though the pairing of applicants to evaluators is not entirely random, we show that the results are robust to specifications and sample restrictions where random assignment is much more likely. The key results are as follows. First, female evaluators assign male applicants a score close to 0.10 standard deviations higher than male evaluators. Second, male reviewers score male and female applicants similarly. Third, female reviewers grade female applicants more harshly than male applicants (by 0.04-0.05 standard deviations), although the estimate is imprecise. We explore three possible mechanisms behind these results and find evidence consistent with gender stereotyping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]