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.
Cite this paper
Sultana, A. M. , Nallusamy, K. A. L. , Suhaili, S. and Yaacob, N. H. (2015). Attitudes among Students towards Gender Beliefs and Moral Values at Higher Learning Institutions in Malaysia. Open Access Library Journal, 2, e1133. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1101133.
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