GENDER AND FAMILY BACKGROUND AS DETERMINANTS OF CHOICE OF VOCATIONS AMONG APPRENTICES IN SELECTED VOCATIONAL TRAINING CENTRES (EDUCATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
CHAPTER ONE
Background to the study
The relevance of profession to an individual or his success in it is not determined by the preponderance of same sexed people with the individual in that profession. Gender stereotyping is a conformist behaviour which hardly makes for a divergent expression of one personal quality or the uniqueness of an individual. This validates the reasoning that no profession should be held as conventional for any human gender.
Gender according to the United Nations definition as adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women (1996) in Beijing China is ?Man and Woman?. But to Bassow (1991), gender is seen as a psychological term describing behaviours and attributes expected of individuals on the basis of being born either male or female. It is on this note that Azikiwe, (1993) illuminates that gender differences are obvious from birth and children are socialized very early into appropriate sex-typed occupation. This assertion tries to identify gender as one of the significant determinants of choice of vocations among people. Emeyonu (1994) articulates this point in his words stating that girls were not supposed to go into Engineering, Law, or Medicine; but should go into professions like teaching and nursing. He went further to assert that:
?A female student applying to study mechanical engineering is look down upon as an oddity and an exception to the rule and perhaps should have her head examined. Girls were supposed to do Arts, Education and Home Economics. Unfortunately, most young Nigerian girls aspiring for higher studies have come to believe this myth and have approached their choice of careers with difference and timidity? (p 125)
Besides, culture and tradition working through the family setting have assigned occupations to males and females in the society; thus each sex is straight-jacketed in areas considered exclusive for it according to family traditional belief or background. In the Nigeria pre-colonial traditional setting before the advent of Western Education, Traditional Education was highly characterized by domestication of girls and trade learning for boys; hence, education of children was polarized between sexes according to their future roles in the society.
