Gender role perceptions of University of Malta students and how these vary according to demographic factors

Abstract

Traditional gender roles and stereotypes continue to limit people’s freedom and choices in all areas of life, starting from small things such as leisure and going up to area as important as health, education, work and family life (EIGE, n.d.). For this reason, it is important to try to get a grasp of how widespread these stereotypic beliefs are within a population. This study aims to gauge the gender role perceptions of students at the University of Malta and how these vary according to age, gender, and area of residence. These were measured using the Gender Role Attitudes Scale (GRAS) a tool that was developed by Garcia-Cueto et al. (2014) in Spain. This tool was sent out as part of an online questionnaire that also asked for the demographics of age, gender, nationality and area of residence. Through voluntary sampling participants then selected themselves by filling in the survey sent via the Office of the Registrar. Through an exploratory factor analysis, the factor scores were calculated and the means of the factor scores were compared for each subgroup of the demographic variables. The only significant difference in factor scores found was due to gender (p < .001). One possible explanation for this difference might have been the male participants’ tendency to remain on the middle ground and choosing to neither agree nor disagree with questions. A major limitation of the study was the small sample size that could have given a positive result as a consequence of over-representation of the subgroup of female participants in the sample.