Sexist gender stereotypes. A study in Cuban medicine students

Abstract

Introduction: inequity among men and women in perpetuated by automatized and generational reproduction of gender stereotypes, which appear enrooted in social subjectivity and are expressed in daily life by multiple ways. The present study is framed in the current efforts for potentiating a world in which gender equity prevails among machista attitudes and behaviors of ancestral character.
Objective: to characterize the stereotypes associated to gender roles in the house, professional and academic, and partnership ambits in a sample of Cuban university students of Medical Sciences.
Material and method: the study starts from the dialectical-materialistic method supported in theoretical methods such as the logic-historic and the structural-systemic, which permitted to analyze, from multiple dimensions, the masculinity and femininity models as interrelated and socially opposed systems. Also, empirical methods were used, such as the survey, the interview and, the discussion groups and composition, and descriptive statistics.
Results: the analysis carried out showed that gender stereotypes affect and predispose the conceptions and ideas of the inter-gender relationships in people, including medical students, who showed sexist attitudes associated to their diverse spheres of performance: family, professional and academic life, engagement.
Conclusions: the study carried out shows that gender steriotypes, in the three stated dimesnions, although have been flexibilized over the time, are still srootedn in the youth imagineries, legitimizing historial inequlities and construction asymetric gender models and patterns centered in sexist attitudes of masculinity and femininity traditionally heritaged.