Determination of Health Workers' Attitudes Towards Gender Roles

Objective: The aim of the study is to determine the attitudes of health professionals towards gender roles. Methods: The study was performed at a university hospital. The universe of the study were physicians and nurses in the institution. The number of physicians and nurses to be sampled was calculated according to the weights and 138 physicians and 133 nurses were investigated by simple random sampling method. The data of the study were collected using the sociodemographic characteristics form and the Gender Roles Attitude Scale (GRAS). The data were evaluated in a computer programmed SPSS 16.0 program. Results: According to the study, 77% of the health professionals have knowledge of the concept of gender. Eighty seven percent of the health professionals stated that there is a gender-based inequality in our country and 86.8% stated that women are negatively affected in this situation. It was found that the average score of the total score of health professionals was 141.55±19.25 (min: 107, max: 180). When the average of the subscale scores of GRAS are examined; 35.32±4.57 for the equality sex role, 28.52±5.16 for the female gender role, 35.83±3.61 for the gender role in marriage, 24.32±4.10 for the male gender role and 28.56±6.31 for the traditional gender role. It was found that the average score of the nurses' total score was higher than that of the physicians and that the average score of female health workers was higher than that of men, 35 years and above, and that of the health workers was statistically higher than 34 and 6 years age group. In addition, the average score of the GRAS score of the health professionals who indicated that they had knowledge about the concept of gender was significantly higher than those without knowledge (p<0.05). Conclusion: Based on the results obtained from this study it was found that the participants had egalitarian gender role attitudes. A significant number of participants have knowledge of the concept of gender. Nurses, women, health workers with age groups of over 35 have a more egalitarian sense of gender