Male and female school graduates: socio-pedagogical portrait in a gender context

Introduction. Gender equality is one of the basic values of the modern world, but there are hidden gender barriers that significantly affect life trajectories. They can act already at school and determine some characteristics of boys and girls at the level of behavior, attitudes towards teachers, choice of extracurricular activities, etc. On the threshold of graduation from school, it is especially important to establish the gender differences that have developed by this moment in professional preferences, value orientations, in the achieved level of “soft skills”, in self-esteem and well- being. Identifying gender differences in high school students is also relevant in connection with the digitalization agenda and the task of attracting girls to the field of IT technologies. The study was aimed at identifying, describing and interpreting gender differences in the socio-pedagogical portraits of male and female school graduates. Materials and methods. The analysis was based on the initial data from a survey of 11th-grade students as part of the St. Petersburg School Graduate study (the total number of respondents in 2022 was 3,509, including 1,632 boys and 1,877 girls). The data were processed by means of constructing the contingency tables for all features with the “Gender” feature, ranking of indicators by the magnitude of the differences identified, and visualization of the gender difference profile. Results. Large gender differences were revealed in such a school education outcome as career guidance: 66% of boys and 25% of girls planned a career in IT and engineering and technical specialties; 40% of girls and 20% of boys – in the field of culture and art. At the same time, in such outcomes as academic subject knowledge, functional literacy, as well as the importance of basic values (health, family, material well-being), the differences between boys and girls were small. A significant gender asymmetry was identified in the leisure time of high school students, their additional classes and digital practices, which undoubtedly affected their skills and professional choice. The psychological characteristics of high school graduates were determined, for which gender differences were the most significant, for example, anxiety (which was often experienced by 46% of girls and 20% of boys), as well as fatigue and other psychogenic disorders. Conclusion. For the true implementation of gender equality in education, it is necessary not only to provide formal equality, but also to perform comprehensive work with gender stereotypes prevalent in society. The results of the study serve as scientific grounds for developing the content of additional education programs for adults – teachers, heads of educational institutions, parents, as well as for developing methodological materials for all participants in the educational process.