Students’ stereotypes about instructors in higher education in Ethiopia

Abstract

No recent study has yet examined gender stereotypes on service expectations using the SERVQUAL model in Ethiopia. Although the model has been used to measure perceived service quality and performance, customers’ stereotypes in service expectations are overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if students hold stereotypes and their expectations vary across the gender of the instructors. This study was conducted on three conveniently selected universities between March and April 2019. Multistage cluster sampling was used to select students taught by both female and male instructors in the previous semester. First, students were asked to rate their expectations of their instructors over the dimensions of service quality namely tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Consequently, no significant difference was observed across the two genders. However, when the students were asked to rate their general expectations of their instructors, they showed significantly lower expectations of female instructors than male instructors. This indicated that there is a contradiction on students’ expectations which might be caused due to preconceptions or stereotypes against female instructors. Governmental bodies, policymakers, and politicians have to be involved to take a radical step for accepting women instructors and support them in their professional works.