Sexual Education, Gender Ideology, and Youth Sexual Empowerment

Abstract

Sexual education plays an essential role in preventing unplanned pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). School-based sexual education programs, in particular, may be well positioned to address social factors that are empirically linked to negative sexual health outcomes, such as traditional social norms surrounding gender and sexuality. However, youth are seldom granted access to sexual education programs that explicitly address these issues. This study presents findings from a pretest–posttest survey of a sexual education program that did. It was designed for eighth graders (N=95) in the context of a school–community collaboration. The study assessed the links between several components of sexual empowerment, including gender ideology, sexual knowledge, and contraceptive beliefs. Findings link participation in the sexual education program to more progressive attitudes toward girls and women, less agreement with hegemonic masculinity ideology, and increases in sexual health and resource knowledge. Structural equation models suggest that traditional attitudes toward women were significantly related to hegemonic masculinity ideology among both boys and girls, which was in turn negatively related to safer contraceptive beliefs.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their appreciation and thanks to the Walnut Avenue Women's Center and the collaborating middle school for their assistance with this study.

Notes

Note. AWSA = Attitudes Toward Women Scale for Adolescents; AMIRS = Adolescent Masculinity Ideology in Relationships Scale; Depo = Depo Provera (“the Shot”); BC = birth control. Univariate tests must surpass p = .001 to be deemed statistically significant because a Bonferroni correction would lower alpha to .002 (.05/30). Cohen (1969) suggests criteria for partial η² effect sizes: low .010, moderate .059, and large .138. Because the results from the MANOVA revealed no interaction effects, means for gender were collapsed across the time waves and means for time were collapsed across gender.

^a Means are estimated marginal means.

*p ≤ .001 in accordance with a Bonferroni correction of .05/30.

†.05 ≥ p > .001, approaching statistical significance.

Note. AWSA = Attitudes Toward Women Scale for Adolescents; AMIRS = Adolescent Masculinity Ideology in Relationships Scale; Depo = Depo Provera (“the Shot”); BC = birth control.

†.10 ≥ p > .05. *p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01. ***p ≤ .001.

Funding for this study was provided through a University of California, Santa Cruz, Psychology Department mini research grant awarded to the first author.