True Left

Researcher Maarja Tinn said the results show Estonian boys’ attitudes to gender equality have become significantly more backward since 2016, when the study was last carried out. For example, a quarter of boys think women should stay out of politics, while half believe men are better suited to politics than women.
“We can now see that it was not a small step backward, but a very significant step backward,” Tinn said.
Experts are concerned about the results. “This is worrying because when we look at the gaps between boys and girls, it seems as if boys and girls in Estonia live in completely different worlds,” Tinn said.



She said eighth-grade girls are much more progressive in their views than boys their age.
“In some cases, Estonian girls even outperform Sweden. However, if we look at the boys, they are at the other end of the scale, along with the boys from Serbia and Romania, where the post-Soviet mindset is prevalent,” the researcher said.
Previously the study showed a wider gap between schools where the language of instruction differed between Estonian and Russian, but this has now closed.
Mare Oja, adviser in the field of general education at the Ministry of Education and Research, said the issue of gender equality has been in the spotlight in Estonian education for a long time. “It is surprising and worrying that boys are expressing such attitudes and that the gaps between girls’ and boys’ attitudes are widening,” she said.
...
“When we talk about extreme propaganda aimed at children and young people, including right-wing populist propaganda, it is almost exclusively aimed at boys. The girl has no place as a subject in this propaganda. She is simply an object, about whom, of course, there is a lot of talk in the propaganda about her role and place, but it is not directed at them as human beings. This is because such views are not inclusive of women, but they are more concerned with putting women in their place,” explained Tinn.