A teacher like me or a student like me? Role model versus teacher bias effect

•I study the impact of student–teacher gender matching on academic achievement for a large sample of 8th graders in Chile.•My results show that girls benefit from being assigned to female teachers, while there is no negative effect for boys.•I provide evidence that the positive effect of female teachers for girls is due to role model and not teacher bias effect.

Several studies have found that teacher–student gender matching has positive effects on student achievement. However, the underlying mechanisms that explain this effect have not been empirically explored. This paper studies the impact of same gender teachers on academic achievement for a large sample of 8th graders in Chile. I provide evidence that girls benefit from being assigned to female teachers, while there is no negative effect on boys. More importantly, I provide evidence that the positive effect is due to role model effects and not to teacher bias effects.