Gender Ideology Among Public University Students in Bangladesh: Does Parents’ Education Matter?

Abstract

Previous studies in Bangladesh lack in investigating the influence of educational attainments on gender ideology among the public university students. This study aims to estimate the association between educational attainments and gender ideology among public university students in Bangladesh. To assess the relationship, this study followed a quantitative research methodology. In total, 908 students were included following the cluster sampling from five purposively selected public universities. Both male and female students participated and were interviewed after verbal consent. A structured interview questionnaire was distributed to collect data. Students’ educational attainment was measured by three variables: i) total GPA of SSC and HSC, ii) stream/ group of HSC education and iii) participation of any gender related course or class. Gender ideology was measured using a 28-item Likert-type attitude towards women scale. Collected data were analyzed through SPSS-23 software. The study protocol was approved by the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Rajshahi. This study showed that the students’ educational attainment had no significant influence on students’ gender ideology. This study found that mothers’ higher education was associated with the students’ more egalitarian gender ideology and students’ mothers’ lower education was associated with the students’ more conservative gender ideology. This study also revealed that female students were more likely to hold an egalitarian gender ideology than male students. The study findings concluded that university student’s sex, their parent’s education is associated with their gender ideology. Policy makers should consider parent’s education to promote egalitarian gender attitudes among the university student Bangladesh.