Social Representations of the Family Among Russian School-Girls and All-Girls Education: Field Quasi-Experimental Research

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze of the effect of the secondary education segregated by gender on social concept of “family” among schoolgirls. The approach used is social constructivism and the method is field quasi experiment. Secondary education segregated by gender is a social phenomenon in Russia. Public opinion polls show that people use the virtually same arguments pro and against it. At the same time there is a correlation between such forms of education and educational achievements in gender sensitive disciplines. Higher professional education segregated by gender is usually related to getting a qualification in the army mainly by young men. Some personality traits and peculiarities of interpersonal relationships among members of the army (including female students) were brought to light. Lastly, some peculiarities of parent-child relationships and some personality patterns among children from families of professional army men were examined. There are two strict definitions of family in Russian research. It’s not obvious, though, how they correspond with social perceptions of it by ‘people on the streets’, especially girls planning to have a family of their own. Today there are a number of surveys on social perceptions of family among unmarried young people (including girls). The results, though, are not comparable with each other and not always methodically correct. The empirical data allows to make the following conclusions: girl’s education segregated by gender, when it is analyzed as an independent variable, predetermined peculiarities of their social representation about family that are better aligned with S. I. Golod’s definition of family and are normative (prepotency of blood relative bond and nuclear families). It must be noted that a number of social communities, though, are also figuratively perceived as family and on the whole (non-)familial communities have “softer” evaluation. The correlation between discovered social representations of family and features of parent/child relationships needs more research.

Keywords

• social representations
• family
• gender-segregated education
• field quasi-experiment