Attitudes among Students towards Gender Beliefs and Moral Values at Higher Learning Institutions in Malaysia

Abstract

The study attempts to measure the student’s gender role attitudes towards equality on ability, beliefs and moral values aspects in a total of 300 students from two higher learning institutions in Malaysia. Self-administered semi-structured questionnaires were handed to each respondent and the information was collected directly by the researchers. The survey questions included student’s gender attitudes towards equality on the aspects of belief, ability and moral values. Results revealed that on belief aspect the most favourable attitude towards equality was in terms of “Boys and girls can perform all tasks equally well” (63.6 percent agree, M = 3.64; SD = 1.00). Similarly, on ability aspects, more favourable attitude was in terms of “Boys and girls should have equal opportunity and should not be treated differently” (77.03% agree M = 3.98; SD = 0.97). The results on student’s gender attitudes towards equality on moral aspects showed that more favourable attitude was in terms of “Boys and girls should have equal opportunity, according to their needs” (88.3% agree, M = 4.15; SD = 0.80). Moreover, the results revealed that beliefs were correlated with the demographic variables such as age (r = 0.29; p < 0.01), race (r = 0.17; p < 0.05) and education (r = 0.21; p < 0.05) while abilities were co-related to gender (r = 0.19; p < 0.01) and education (r = 0.01; p < 0.05). Moral values were also correlated with gender (r = 0.24; p < 0.01), race (r = 0.28; p < 0.01) and hometown (r = 0.174; p < 0.01). With respect to gender beliefs and value aspects, although an overwhelming acceptance was observed among student’s attitudes, traditional norms were noted especially on ability aspects. Given the importance of the student’s favourable attitude towards equality that would assist to achieve equality between men and women in the community, several suggestions are made.