Male Student Workers Follow Female Professors' Rules Less Often

Student workers shape professor productivity through the quality of research and teaching support they provide, and that support depends in part on whether students follow directions or rules set by the professor. Existing work on rule following is growing, but little is known about what shapes rule following in student–professor work relationships.

🧪 How the study tested this: A survey experiment varied whether instructions were presented as written or unwritten and whether they were attributed to a male or female professor. The design measured how these two factors—formalization of rules and the gender of the messenger—affect student willingness to follow instructions.

📊 Key findings:

• Students largely follow rules regardless of whether instructions are written or unwritten; formalization had little impact on compliance.
• A marked gender bias emerged: male students were less likely to follow instructions attributed to a female professor than the same instructions attributed to a male professor.
• This asymmetric compliance among student workers represents an additional source of gender bias in academia that can affect professor productivity via the support students provide.

📌 Why it matters: The results identify student-worker behavior as a locus of gender bias that can undermine faculty work. The observed reluctance of male students to follow female professors' instructions suggests that efforts to increase female representation or to structure student–faculty interactions differently could reduce this bias and its productivity costs.