DESCRIPTORS: gender tolerance, polarization, continuum, gender approach, acceptance, theoretical basis, a practical model.

SYNOPSIS: The author presents the results of a long-term research with the objective to develop high school students’ gender tolerance that allowed to construct a theoretical basis and a practical model of this process, ready to be used in the work with teenagers and young adults.

In the third millennium the world community is faced with the problem of tolerance formation in gender relations. The role of schools in this process is critical. The formation of gender tolerance as an integral feature of a personality is becoming a vital part of the education goals, aiming at the gender socialization of students.

Today, two models of gender role socialization are discussed in the scholarly articles: one of polarization (based on a strict distribution of male and female roles) and the other, of continuum (allowing a mixture of male and female functions.) The second model and the development of a gender approach based on it are considered most important from the point of view of gender role students’ socialization.

According to Anatoly Mudrik, gender approach in education aims to create such conditions for the education of young men and women in which their development and spiritual value orientation will contribute to the formation of individual positive masculine, feminine, and androgynous features, as well as to the relatively painless adjustment of the younger generation to the realities of gender-role attitudes and the effective gender-role separation in the society. [1]

Gender tolerance formation is becoming one of the most crucial problems in educating younger generations within the framework of gender approach. It is especially important for high school students, and since the process of their primary socialization is complete by that time, they are more inclined towards communicating with the opposite gender, and also they have a developed capacity of reflection and self-analysis. This is also a period of values’ reevaluation, orientation towards the future, and readiness for civic, personal, and professional self-determination.

Realizing the importance of this problem we conducted an experimental research with the main goal to study gender tolerance formation in the group of high school students. In our understanding, gender tolerance is a psychological-educational readiness to realize, accept, and embrace different types of gender identity, multiple ways of gender behavior, and gender equality in a wide social context based on an active moral personal status. [4]

This definition implies that gender tolerance serves as a personal position/view point which reveals personal attitudes, values, motives, and senses which together allow to fulfill a conscious and responsible choice. This is an active position in life which shows that an individual is deliberately and independently defining his/her own fate. A personality of this type is defined as a bearer of certain moral values, the most important of which are nonviolence, freedom, equality, human being, and another person.

Gender tolerance is defined as a unity of psychological readiness (an inner state, motives, and readiness to positively accept another person) and psychological-educational preparedness (a skill to communicate, understand, and decipher human beings and the surrounding world.) We define “understanding” as a personal capacity to see the world as if with the eyes of another person, as a particular cognitive act in which one-sidedness of objective knowledge can be overcome. We define “acceptance” (following the ideas of P.V. Stepanov [2]) as a positive attitude to the manifestation of “otherness,” as an emotional category, which is accompanied by the understanding of the value, opinions or principles of “another” human being.

We agree with S.H. Oushakin [3] that gender identity is not so much the result of identification as it is a process, which triggers different variants of masculinity and femininity, (and we take into consideration individual and flexible nature of gender differences.) We accept a rich diversity of gender behavior and gender roles, variations and flexibility in acquiring gender-role repertoire that is always colored by certain individuality. And finally, we would like to underline the importance and value of gender equality as an equal legal status of men and women and their equal opportunities to fully develop their capacities in different spheres of life.

The formation of gender tolerance in high school students is a process of gradual formation and development of three interrelated components:

1. Cognitive – understanding gender identity and gender stereotypes in various spheres of life, awareness of personal gender attitudes.
2. Emotional – a stable positive emotional attitude towards gender and gender behavior differences, a capacity to understand and unconditionally accept people of different genders, to master different ways of emotional self-regulation.
3. Interactive – a predisposition towards the behavior and activities based on cooperation and conflict-free interaction among people of different genders, a capacity to lead a constructive dialogue and to develop cooperative interaction among genders.

Our research examines how these components manifest themselves in various spheres of life where we can observe the gender socialization process. We identified the following spheres: interpersonal communication of young men and women, individual interests and hobbies, family life, professional activities, and social-political activities. To conduct the research we have developed a formative model of a pedagogical experiment (a number of classes for high school students – “Hormone&I”) and a set of diagnostics to identify changes in the process of gender tolerance formation.

Teenagers of high school age are most sensitive to the formation of gender tolerance. That is why we have chosen high school students from School #3 in Novoulyanovsk as participants in our experimental work. We conducted twenty experimental classes (35 hours total) once a week. The experimental group consisted of nineteen students from class group 10B (11 girls and 8 boys) and the control group also consisted of nineteen students (11 girls and 8 boys) from class group 10A. Participation in the groups was voluntary.

We have worked out a specific questionnaire (male and female variants) aimed at determining the gender tolerance of participants. The questionnaire had three primary scales aimed at the identification of the level of formation of cognitive, emotional, and interactive components of gender tolerance, and three additional scales aimed at determining the degree of tolerance towards specific manifestations of masculinity and femininity:

1. The scale of leadership – dominance-submission
2. The scale of emotion – restraint-sensitivity
3. The scale of activity – activity-passivity

The questionnaire also included five scales in accordance with the main areas of life activities. [4]

In order to identify the authenticity of differences between experimental and control groups the U-Mann-Whitney test (for p = 0.05) was used. At the end of the formative experiment significant differences were found between the control group (CG) and experimental group (EG) in the degree of gender tolerance formation among the participants as a whole (p = 0.006), emotional (p = 0.027), and interactive (p = 0.007) components; in the position of high school students regarding tolerant relations among genders in social and political activities (p = 0.03) and hobbies (p = 0.007); in the acceptance of individual expressions of emotions (p = 0.27) and activity (p = 0) of the representatives of the opposite gender.

No significant differences have been detected in the data regarding the CG and EG in the cognitive component (p = 0.124), family life (p = 0.265) and occupation (p = 0.063), as well as in the acceptance of the leadership manifestations (p = 0.285) of the opposite gender.

In general, the study confirmed the hypothesis that high school students from the EG significantly exceeded the control group peers in the overall degree of gender tolerance formation. Consequently, a specially designed and implemented training program for high school students has had a positive effect on the formation of such personality traits as general tolerance.

To assess the quality of the shift of the feature under study, i.e. high schools’ gender tolerance, we have used in both groups a T-Wilcoxon-test at (p = 0.05).  This test allowed to establish a significant shift towards the increase of the total degree of gender tolerance formation in the EG (p = 0.003).

For all three components in the EG changes were noted towards the increase of the indicators of the studied features: a cognitive level (p = 0.036), emotional level (p = 0.036), and activity level (p = 0.029). In the areas of hobbies (p = 0.041), family life (p = 0.044), occupational activity (p = 0.008) of the EG the findings indicated a significant shift towards an increased gender tolerance. But in students’ gender tolerance in such areas as social and political activities (p = 0.145) and interpersonal skills (p = 0.506) no significant improvements were shown.

On the scales of emotionality (p = 0.003) and activity (p = 0.009) in the EG a significant shift was observed in the positive direction, but the scale of leadership (p = 0.347) showed no positive dynamics of the change in the indicator.

In general, the overall index of the level of gender tolerance formation in the EG confirmed the hypothesis that students’ shift toward increasing gender tolerance index was significantly predominant.

In the CG there was a credible “typical” shift to a lower degree of gender tolerance. This probably happened due to the fact that the expansion of the social environment influence on high school students leads to an active assignment of negative gender stereotypes and attitudes that exist in society.

The nature of the questionnaire statements leads to the conclusion about the levels of gender tolerance formation / intolerance of high school students. We have identified six levels of the feature: Level 1 – marked gender tolerance, Level 2 – conscious gender intolerance, Level 3 – hidden gender intolerance, Level 4 – passive gender tolerance, Level 5 – conscious gender tolerance, and Level 6 – an active gender tolerance.

The results of the study of the levels of gender tolerance formation of high school students are represented in the table.

Table
The level of gender tolerance formation of high school students
of the EG and CG (in %)

Before the experiment the degree of the manifestation of gender tolerance in EG and CG seemed to be approximately the same. At the end of the experiment, compared to the minor or even negative changes in the degree of gender tolerance formation in some CG students, the EG participants showed positive dynamics in the formation of the quality under study.

Thus, the study has allowed to provide a theoretical basis as well as to check in practice the model of gender tolerance of high school students, a complex of psychological and educational tools aimed at the formation of the following components: cognitive (information and reference, and reflexive), emotional (emphatic and emotional self-regulation) and activity (dialogues and interaction); the main indicators that reflect the level of formation of the components manifested in various spheres of life (interpersonal communication, hobbies, occupations, family, social and political life.)

The program of “Hormone&I” has helped to create strong educational conditions for the formation of gender tolerance, secured the implementation of the correction of the most rigid gender stereotypes of high school students while they were almost starting their “adult lives” which in its turn has contributed to the unconditional acceptance of individual features, diversity of gender manifestations of personality and partnership model of the interaction of different genders. 

References

1. Mudrik, A. On a gender approach to social education / Educational work in schools. - 2003. - #5. - S. 15-19.
2. Stepanov, P.V. Teaching tolerance in school children: theory, technique, diagnostics  - M.: AIC and ABS, 2003.
3. Oushakin, S. Gender  as an ideological product / Chelovek. - 1997. - #2. - S. 62-75.
4. Shustova, L.P. Gender tolerance of a school student: theory and practice of education: practice-oriented monograph. - Ulyanovsk: UIPKPRO, 2009. - 276 p.