Exploring Students' Perceptions of Institutional Sexism in Secondary Education

Abstract

This quantitative study investigates the multi-dimensional nature of institutional sexism, focusing on students' perceptions in an educational context. A self-designed scale is developed to assess the diverse manifestations of institutional sexism, including both its overt and subtle forms. A principal component analysis was conducted on the eight items of the institutional sexism climate scale to determine the latent variables that could be extracted from the perceived institutional sexism measure. Cronbach’s coefficient alpha was calculated to measure the scale reliability, and a t-test was run to examine differences in students’ perceptions of institutional sexism with respect to gender. Moreover, a correlation analysis was carried out to investigate whether the latent variables of institutional sexism correlate with each other. One intriguing finding of this study is that while no significant gender differences were found in the overall perceptions of institutional sexism, there were notable variations at the level of the parameters of institutional sexism. Female students tended to perceive the overt form of sexism embedded in teacher differential treatment, whereas male students showed greater awareness of its subtle form manifested in the masculine norms that govern the overall institutional climate. In addition, a positive correlation was identified between the two components of institutional sexism, which was consistent with previous research. The implications of the findings, as well as the contributions and recommendations for educational practice and future research, were discussed.