The role of a gender equality course on gender perceptions and dating violence attitudes of social work and child development students

The objective of this research is to determine the role of the Gender Equality Course on gender perceptions and dating violence attitudes of undergraduate students. To this end, a pre-post observational design of this quantitative research was carried out at Ondokuz Mayıs University, Türkiye. The participants were 520 students from the Department of Social Work and Child Development. There were two research groups, consisting of an experimental group and a control group. Group-1 consists of 281 students who received the gender equality course in their undergraduate program curriculum from the same lecturer (the researcher herself), whereas Group-2 comprised the 239 students who had not received any gender equality course or training before. The findings demonstrated that the course plays a moderating role in the relationship between gender perceptions and dating violence attitudes of the participants. Additionally, a positive correlation was found between gender perceptions and dating violence attitudes. Female students exhibited higher gender perceptions and stronger opposition to dating violence compared to males. The findings indicate that there is a need to add the course to the curricula of other departments with similar syllabi to promote equitable gender attitudes and prevent dating violence.