A forthcoming study in the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture Journal found that students in an online course who had the same TA gave that TA five times as many negative evaluations when they believed that she was a woman, as compared to when they thought she was a man.

Female students tended to give the putative female TA the worst scores of all, paralleling the U.S.-based findings of a major 2016 study on gender bias in teacher ratings.

Why does this all matter? Whereas negative evaluations of female professors may impact whether and how their careers progress, biased evaluations may discourage or prevent women from entering the teaching profession at all.

As they study says, “These SET discrepancies have the potential to affect the motivation of female graduate students to pursue careers in academia, and may impact hiring decisions, as SET scores are a frequently used tool for hiring committees in academia.”