Adolescents’ Gender Stereotypes, Differences and Other Aspects of Behaviour in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa1

While in metropolitan countries gender stereotypes has been a topic of extensive research, this has not been the case in African countries including South Africa. Such a deficit served as a motivation for investigating the extent to which gender stereotypes among adolescents prevail in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The sample was based on 599 Junior Secondary School students in grades 7-9 in Mthatha Eastern Province, South Africa. A questionnaire on gender stereotypes consisting of ten statements was administered to 239 girls and 360 boys drawn from five Junior Secondary Schools participating in the study. A chi square was used for statistical analysis. Based on the entire sample, the responses for each one of the ten statements in the questionnaire, early adolescents scored statistically significant on gender stereotypes. Further analysis based on gender showed statistically significant differences in gender stereotypes. The findings confirmed the findings of researchers in gender stereotypes in metropolitan countries. As reported in the literature, South African early adolescents experience gender stereotypes as observed in other cultures. Such results have implications for children, parents, teachers, educational institutions and society at large. INTRODUCTION This investigation explored the extent to which gender stereotypes of adolescents prevail in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The investigation aimed at relating such stereotyping to how it impacts on learners in their school work, decision making in terms of subject choice and career to be pursued. It is vital that such knowledge be available for guidance not only in terms of school performance and career choices, but also in terms of child-rearing practices. By gender stereotyping is meant the traditional perception of boys and girls as well as men and women regarding themselves and each other in the context of what they can or cannot do or whether they are capable of doing well or not so well; how they ought to think or behave purely on the ground of their gender (Delamere & Shaw, 2010; Holdsworth, 2007; Lee-Thomas, Sumsion & Robert, 2005; Martin, 1995).Gender stereotypes may further be defined as ‘social differences between women and men that have been learned over time and may differ within and between cultures, rather than the biological characteristics which differentiate people as males or females’ (Commonwealth Secretariat, 2008: 2). In a study of black South African school-going adolescents aged 15 and 17 years, Gaganakis (2003) argues that sex role stereotyping occurs early in life as one’s gender is subjected to a socialisation process leading to internalisation and integration in one’s personality. Consequently, girls are associated with being passive, nurturing, needing approval, emotional, intuitive, in contrast to boys who are perceived to be rational, assertive, competitive, ambitious, curious and independent. In another South African study of adolescents, Phetla (2007) points out that gender roles are defined on the basis of one’s culture marked by differentiation of both girls and boys as well as men and women, as they go through socialisation. Part of this socialisation entails the coinage and usage of nicknames among South Africans (De Klerk & Bosch, 1996). In nicknaming there is reflected the nurturing and nurtured role of women in society, as well as the difference in social power between men and women. Such nicknaming is partly instrumental in promoting stereotypes more than may be in the fixed language used. Coinage and usage of nicknames among predominantly South African adolescent bearers and users is dominated by males more than females, and the latter being associated with affect more than being humorous and critical effect (ibid).