Gender and population: the educational experience

Role of teachers is particularly central in the school context: teachers bring their own ideas about gender to the classroom; they may treat students differently based on their own or the student's gender, communicate different expectations for students, assign chores based on sex, and monitor or discipline students differently. This study explores the gender-stereotyped beliefs and perception of secondary school teachers’ in classroom practices. A total of 257 teachers’ participated in this study conducted by International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), as a part of ongoing Gender Equity Movement in Schools (GEMS) Project. A self-administered questionnaire was used to generate responses from teachers on how gender-stereotypes are played out in their classroom practices. Results indicate that most of the teachers surveyed directly or indirectly promote gender-stereotypes. Data reveals that female teachers are more gender equitable than male teacher, regression result depict that female teachers are significantly 3.7 times more gender equitable than their counterpart male teacher. The study recommends that teacher’s education curricula for both pre-service and in-service must be permeated with opportunities to acquire gender sensitivity knowledge, skills and develop attitudes in classroom layout.

This paper is based from the 2011 Indonesian Gender and Reproductive Health Survey of Year 6 and Year 12 students, teachers and school principals (N=8972). The aim is to evaluate students’ and teachers’ understanding and reporting of sexual harassment. In Indonesia sexual harassment has started to be introduced in Year 5 in Sport and Healthy Living education. Our bivariate and logistic regression analysis showed female teachers were more likely to classify behaviour as sexual harassment comparing to male teachers. There are some provincial differences where teachers in South Sulawesi were the least likely to classify any behaviour as constituting sexual behaviour compared to teachers in other provinces. Teachers in religious schools were significantly more likely to classify behaviour such as being touched, touching in the genital area, being forced to touch another’s genitals, forced to be naked, rape and being treated as a sexual object as sexual harassment compared to teachers in non-religious schools. Among students, if harassed, girls were more likely to report and take action compared to boys. Year 6 students were more likely to report harassment to parents, police or teachers and school principals while Year 12 students will handle the matter themselves.

This descriptive cross-sectional study documented the prevalence of sexual harassment (SH) among 250 consenting students of University College Hospital Ibadan’s school of nursing using a pre-tested questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and Chi-square test were used to analyze the data at 5% level of significance. Mean age was 23.0 ± 4.1 years, 78.8% were females and 91.2% perceived SH to be common in the school. Fifty-eight percent of respondents (11.6% males, 46.4% females) had ever been sexually harassed. Main perpetrators of SH against females were male resident doctors (24.5%) and male patients (11.3%) while female colleagues (44.8%) and female patients (20.7%) were for males. Types of SH experienced were unwanted body contact (79.3%), breast contact (67.6%), enticement (45.5%), attempted rape (39.3%) and unwanted kiss (26.3%). Attending parties and mode of dressing were positively associated with experience of SH. Main coping strategies employed were reporting to school authority, ignoring the perpetrator, confrontation and breaking up the relationship. Sexual harassment is prevalent among the students studied with females more affected. Coping strategies adopted were adjudged ineffective. Institutional based interventions such as sensitization, capacity on coping strategy skills, legislation and policy reviews are needed