Gender Sensitivity of the Students of Secondary Level of Education: A Critical Investigation

This paper presents the findings of a study on the secondary level students sensitivity towards some core gender issues. In all 300 students were sampled from 10 secondary schools, 5 urban and five rural, of greater Dhaka. Finding reveals that secondary students had on the average moderate level of sensitivity regarding gender relationship. They have developed gender sensitive attitude towards a wide range of issues regarding gender relationship such as educational opportunity, gender violence, women s diversified roles and responsibilities, sharing of household, distribution offload, women's economic independence and decision making role in the family, freedom of movement, age at marriage, etc. Despite this significant achievement secondary students were found to express negative attitude towards three vital gender issues. These include preference of male child in the family, women's child rearing responsibility and social status of man. The findings further exhibited some distinction in the attitudes of the students by gender and locality. However, these differences failed to achieve statistical significance at the accepted probability level. Thus this paper conclude that the secondary education sector should take required. measures for further consolidation and integration of the acquired sensitivity of the secondary students with special focus to male as well as rural students. A set of recommendations is forwarded to this end.