An exploratory study examined the effect of gender on student evaluation ratings of journalism and mass communication instructors. Subjects were 8 professors (4 male and 4 female) who represented a wide range of teaching experience and taught a total of 243 students (108 women and 135 men) in 10 different types of classrooms. A total of 241 students completed a questionnaire consisting of five questions from regular departmental evaluation forms (the "objective" index) and the pool of the five highest loaded items for masculinity and the five highest loaded items for femininity from the Bem Sex-Role Inventory. Results indicate that: (1) female teachers were rated better than male teachers on the objective index; (2) female teachers were rated significantly higher than the male teachers on the masculinity index; (3) female teachers scored better on the femininity index, but the effect was not statistically significant; (4) although the male students rated male instructors better on the objective and femininity indexes, the effects were not statistically significant; (5) female students rated female instructors higher than males on the femininity and objective indexes, with no statistically significant differences found on the masculinity index; and (6) female students did not rate instructors as a group high, and the male students did not rate instructors in general low. Findings suggest some evidence for gender bonding, or a relationship between the instructor of one gender and the students of the same gender, particularly among the females. (Contains 29 references.) (RS)