Universal Journal of Educational Research 7(10A): 1-6, 2019 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2019.071701 Students' Perception, Expectation and Satisfaction toward the Characteristics of Female Lecturers in Higher Education Nur Idayu Badrolhisam * , Norhidayah Mohd Rashid, Hairunisa Ma’amor, Mohamad Naqiuddin Md Mansor, Siti Norashikin Bashirun Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia Received June 28, 2019; Revised September 5, 2019; Accepted September 12, 2019 Copyright©2019 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract Students’ perceptions, expectations and satisfaction in higher education are vital to be measured in order to improve the quality of higher education institutions. The paper focuses on these three variables specifically as well as the characteristics of female lecturers in higher education. There are many studies that focused on the teaching quality among lecturers in higher education, but few have provided emphasis on female lecturers and their traits for improvement of higher education establishments. To better understand the characteristics of female lecturers, the study sampled 134 students in a Malaysian public university to gauge their level of perception, expectation and satisfaction. The study found that female lecturers have the best soft-skills which in turn, make the students feel comfortable and welcomed in higher education institutions. At the same time, the students expect female lecturers to be more knowledgeable despite the fact that most of them feel very satisfied with the knowledgeability portrayed by female lecturers. Keywords Female Lecturers, Characteristics, Students’ Perception, Students’ Expectation, Students’ Satisfaction 1. Introduction In higher education, students are considered the external customers that should be treated equally like clients in the corporate world. Their perception and expectation on higher education institutions should not be taken lightly and should be taken into account to help the organizations to improve their efficiency in customer service. Customer satisfaction in higher education begins with the expectations and experiences of the customers that have been created upon the service delivered by many parties [1]. Likewise, the students’ evaluation on the lecturers’ performance can be a good indicator of teaching performance where it will improve personnel developments and educational standards [2]. In the context of lecturers’ effectiveness, the evaluations from students influenced the teaching performance and efficiency [3]. In Malaysia, for example, the Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) has been used widely in many education levels to evaluate the perceptions related to teacher effectiveness [4]. At the same time, the students’ academic performance is affected by teaching effectiveness, the environment and facilities as well as the subjects taught by the lecturers [5]. The SET on female lecturers’ focuses on personality and appearance more often than male lecturers because they may have less respect professionally toward their female lecturers [6]. Nonetheless, when we are talking about the issues on teaching effectiveness, there is also a big difference between male and female lecturers. Gender bias disadvantages females because students perceive that female lecturers, although competent, are too feminine to hold the authority [7]. It is learned that male lecturers were ranked higher in the perception of being more organized and very enthusiastic compared to the female lecturers [8]. This is because the male lecturers are considered to possess organization, understanding, passion, involvement and intelligibility skills [8]. However, the students’ perception on an older female lecture has activated a “mother” representation because they perceive her as having a strong work ethic, thus, resulting in the students being more focused during a short lecture [3]. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify students’ perceptions and expectations towards female lecturers in higher education in order to gain better insight into their definition of a high-quality female lecturer based CITE THIS PAPER [1] Nur Idayu Badrolhisam , Norhidayah Mohd Rashid , Hairunisa Ma'amor , Mohamad Naqiuddin Md Mansor , Siti Norashikin Bashirun , "Students' Perception, Expectation and Satisfaction toward the Characteristics of Female Lecturers in Higher Education," Universal Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 7, No. 10A, pp. 1 - 6, 2019. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2019.071701.