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The presented research set in a Croatian context explores beliefs about parental/maternity leave and factors explaining these beliefs. The data was gathered on a nationally representative sample of people living in Croatia (N=1000). Participants were asked questions about their beliefs towards parental leave take-up by the mother and the father, their socio-demographic data, attendance of religious services, partners' income disparity and gender- role beliefs. The results show that around 49% of both men and women believe that it is solely the mother's responsibility to use the entire leave, an additional 27% believe that the father should take some part of the leave, and around 24% believe that parents should share the leave equally. Men and women who support more equally shared leave take-up attend religious services less often and hold more egalitarian beliefs about gender division of labour, but do not differ in partners' income disparity. These results imply that gender ideology theory is more applicable in the explanation of beliefs about the gender division of parental leave compared to time-allocation theory. Results of the multinomial logistic regressions show that the strongest predictor of the belief about leave take-up is the gender-role belief. The less the participants believe that the gender division of labour should be traditionally divided, the more likely they are to support equally shared leave between parents. The implication of these findings is that shifts towards supporting gender egalitarian leave take-up will most likely not occur until the attitudes toward gender roles become more egalitarian in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current public debates in Croatia brought the issues o f gay and lesbian civil rights to the forefront o f scientific interest. So far, Croatian researches were mostly interested in the determinants o f general attitudes towards gays and lesbians, while research on attitudes toward their civil rights remained neglected. Our study aimed to investigate student attitudes toward gay and lesbian civil rights, which is especially interesting because the study was conducted in the moment when the Life Partnership Act for the Persons o f the Same Sex, which is now in force, was being prepared, in the study also deals with gender differences in the support o f gay and lesbian civil rights. The determinants o f attitudes toward gay and lesbian civil rights - gender, religiosity, social contact with gays and lesbians, courses on the topic o f homosexuality and modern prejudice toward homosexual persons were also analysed. A total o f 1551 heterosexual students from the University o f Zagreb, University o f Rijeka, University o f Split and University o f Osijek participated in the study. We used Attitudes toward gay/lesbian civil rights scale, Modern prejudice toward homosexual persons scale and we asked participants about their contact with gays/lesbians, religiosity, courses on the topic o f homosexuality at the university and their interest in gay and lesbian issues. Students held the most favourable attitudes toward gay and lesbian employment rights and the right to visit their partner in the hospital. They supported gay and lesbian marriage, adoption and in vitro fertilization to a lesser extent. Women supported all the gay and lesbian rights more than men. After controlling for their interest in gay and lesbian issues, women, particularly those with less prejudice toward homosexual persons, those who are less religious and who have more contact with gays and lesbians gave more support to gay and lesbian civil rights. Our findings are mostly expected, and they have clear practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the research results on the effects that gender and socio-economic and socio-cultural characteristics have on pupils' achievement in mathematics and secondary school choice. The research was conceptually connected to Bourdieu (1977) and carried out on a sample of 693 elementary school pupils from Zagreb and the surrounding Zagreb County. The results have shown that girls have higher school grades in mathematics than boys, and are more likely to choose grammar schools than vocational schools with a large number of math lessons (technical schools). Pupils from families with higher socio-economic and socio-cultural status achieve better grades and more often choose schools with a large number of math lessons. Gender, parents 'higher level of education, owning classical literature and the Internet access in one's home proved to be the strongest predictors of higher mathematics achievement. As for the choice of schools, the choice of grammar school was primarily explained by cultural resources of the family, while the choice of technical school was explained by pupils 'gender. These findings are consistent with the results of similar research studies in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of early experience of gender discrimination on the perception of gender inequality and related behavior later in life. According to social learning theories, individuals who experienced unequal treatment in their family of origin should internalize traditional gender roles. On the other hand, based on cognitive theories, we would expect these persons, because of their strong negative experience of injustice, to become more sensitive to issues of gender inequality and to develop egalitarian attitudes towards gender roles. A national representative sample of 1363 participants reported on their experiences of gender discrimination within their family of origin, their perception of gender inequality in Croatian society, attitudes towards gender roles, hostile sexism, their tendency to discriminate based on gender, and their willingness to engage in affirmative actions aimed to reduce gender inequality in Croatian society. Results show that 50% of women and one third of men were exposed to some form of unequal treatment in their family, both by their mothers and fathers. Women who experienced gender discrimination perceive more gender inequality in Croatian society today than those who did not have this experience. Also, both men and women who experienced gender discrimination have more egalitarian attitudes toward gender roles and are more willing to engage in affirmative actions aimed to reduce gender inequality. However, there were no differences in hostile sexism and the tendency to discriminate based on gender. Findings confirm the hypothesis about the effect of early negative experience on greater awareness of gender issues. At the same time they show that even today there is a great influence of traditional gender norms in Croatian culture, which can be particularly seen in the participants' tendency to discriminate others based on gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]