Attitudes and Perception of Young working men on Gender Discrepancy

Introduction: Globalization has strengthened women’s position across the world fostering the country’s economy by women’s participation in various job markets.Today women are seen as potential catalyst of social development inside and outside the four walls of their homes. However, promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women is still an under achieved target set in “Millennium Development Goals” by United Nations. Present study tried to address these issues by interviewing young working men to get the holistic visualization of their attitudes towards gender bias and especially towards gender discrepancy at work. Methods: The study was being conducted on young working men in and around Ahmedabad city. Study was a cross sectional interview based descriptive study with pre-designed, pre-tested and validated self-reported questionnaire. The questionnaires included tenitem personality inventory (TIPI), questions to measure Attitude and perception towards females, gender stereotyping and attitude towards crime against women. Results: This study is on-going. A total of 213 young male workers with age 20.6 ± 6.9 years, education of 4.2 ± 2.3 years, BMI 19.4 ± 2.8 with 42 % reporting substance abuse in the form of tobacco or alcohol. The total attitude score of 84.1 ± 8.1 (range 61 to 105), the crime against women score of 40.3 ± 5.5 (range 16 to 47), TIPI score of 44.1 ± 5.4 (range 29 to 60). Discussion: The study endeavoured to collect information about the attitude developed by young working men towards females. As young age is age of learning and acceptance of new ideas, it is important to understand whether the developed mentality is positive or negative. The present paper reports the preliminary findings of the study. The early results indicate presence of negative attitude of young working men towards females however concluding interpretations can be made after completion of the study.