Comparison of attitudes toward women and measures of interests between feminist, traditional female and male university students

Abstract

This study compared six diverse groups of university students on work value, work interests, experiental data, and attitude toward women. It was essentially a descriptive study. The subjects were university students. There were four female groups, two males groups. Subjects numbered 171. Ninety students were from Texas A&M University. Eighty-one were from the University of Texas. From each university a group of feminists, a group of traditional women, and a group of men were administered a test battery and a biographical data survey. All work was anonymous. The battery included the merged form of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank, the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory, Super's Work Values Inventory, an Incomplete Sentence Form, and Spence and Helmreich's Short Version of Attitudes toward Women Scale. Subjects were compared in three designs- all subjects I group versus group, university students versus university students and males versus females. Results indicated significant differences between feminists and non-feminists, males and females, university students and university students, as well as group versus group. In general, with the feminists excluded, students from Texas A&M University tended to be conservative in their attitudes, values, and interests while both groups of feminists and the students from the University of Texas tended to exhibit a more liberal frame of attitudes, values, and interests. Feminists had identical general theme profiles and very similar basic interests patterns. Feminists were significantly more liberal toward women than any of the other groups. Women indicated more interests than did men. On numerous variables traditional women were very similar to the men at the same university. The feminist groups were quite similar to each other in most instances.