IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ajk/ajkdps/439.html

Gender Discrimination against Pre-PhD Students: A Field Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Philipp Doerrenberg

    (University of Mannheim)

  • Christoph Feldhaus

    (Ruhr University Bochum)

  • Paula Scholz

    (University of Cologne)

  • Sebastian Berger

    (Bern University of Applied Sciences)

Abstract

We conduct a field experiment on gender discrimination against pre-PhD students in academic economics and business administration. We invite the universe of postdocs and professors at German, Austrian, and Swiss universities to a survey on AI in teaching. Invitations are randomly sent by nine male and nine female Master’s students. Each student also randomly varies whether their email mentions a PhD intention. Male researchers provide more answers to female students, while female researchers show no average gender difference. PhD intention increases male researchers’ responses to male students. It reduces female researchers’ responses to female students, driven mainly by tenured researchers.

Suggested Citation

  • Philipp Doerrenberg & Christoph Feldhaus & Paula Scholz & Sebastian Berger, 2026. "Gender Discrimination against Pre-PhD Students: A Field Experiment," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 439, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:439
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkdps/ECONtribute_439_2026.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2026
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:439. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ECONtribute Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.econtribute.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.