Gender Stereotypes and Teachers Perceptions (The Case of Pakistan)

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitude and perception of university teachers towards students’ gender role. A self-administrated questionnaire was used to engender the responses from 155 university teachers of private  and public sector  universities in Pakistan and responses were analyzed according to gender and education in order to find out that why they show biasness towards male and female students and how gender-stereotype is played out by teachers in the classroom. In this paper we will also analyze that how these demographic independent variables effects the belief and perception of teachers regarding students’ gender role. Results indicate that teachers have different behavior towards male and female students and it is due to teacher’s perceptions and attitude toward their students’ gender role. Result shows that discrimination by teachers towards the students’ gender role in public and private sector universities as well as age, qualification, designation, language, marital status and ownership have significant relationship with students’ gender biasness. This relationship has not been investigated in Pakistan before so our study is with the purpose to empirically get an insight to Pakistan. As teacher gender role stereotyping is the most considerable factor in educational differences of gender but there are few studies focusing on it. It is agreed that teachers have the greatest influence on educational stereotypes so; our study is part of the minority effort to deal with this problem.

Keywords: Teachers ‘Demographics, Gender Stereotypes, Teachers' Perceptions and Belief, Students' Gender Roles; Pakistan.